Tons of blogs vie for your attention. You can find blogs on organizing, cooking, cleaning, parenting, getting close to God, renewing your marriage, and so many more.
So why do you read this one?
Over the weekend I began to think more about why I write, and what the main message is that I'm trying to convey. After all, I don't just want to write so that I entertain you, or so that you all boost my traffic numbers. I want to write to challenge you--and at the same time to challenge myself, because through blogging and writing I often clarify my own goals and thoughts.
What am I trying to do? Let me start by telling you what my primary purpose is NOT. I am not trying to teach you how to clean, or get organized, or parent, or even how to be married. I am not even trying to teach you how to get closer to God (though I hope you do that through this blog). There are so many blogs that specialize in each of these things, and do it better.
What I am trying to do is to spur you on to live deliberately; to challenge what other people have told you you should do with your life. I want to ask those questions that open up our minds to the possibilities that God really does have for our lives, and see how things could be richer, more fulfilling, more meaningful, more intimate.
That's the meaning of the name of the blog: To Love, Honor and Vacuum, which was originally the name of my first book. Sometimes we get into this groove where it feels like most of our lives is a job, an endless assembly line, and we can't get off. But life isn't like that. You always have choices, and those choices can take you closer to God's heart, and thus closer to true joy.
I firmly believe that our culture works directly against that as it seeps into us, even when we don't want it to. And that culture teaches primariliy three things: laziness, selfishness, and dissatisfaction. It teaches laziness because it says the most important thing is to be entertained. We aren't to try hard at anything; we are to find the shortcuts. Get away with the least effort possible! It teaches selfishness because it says that the most important thing is to be happy, rather than to be purposeful. We are to find happiness, and if we don't have happiness, we should dump what we're doing. And it teaches dissatisfaction because it's always showing us how we could be doing a little bit more, trying a little bit harder, and finally achieving success. Except that it's always that little bit more out of reach.
I don't want to teach you how to work harder; frankly, I think most of us are busy enough. I simply want to teach you how to think differently about how we live. Most people, I think, go through this life of being a wife and mommy without giving it real thought. What am I building? Are we growing closer? Does my family love God? Are we spending time in a meaningful way? A lot of us don't have time for these questions because we're so busy trying to get laundry done and chauffeur kids and head to work, because we've bought into the idea that life has to be that chaotic. It doesn't.
Yet we won't see those possibilities unless we stop drifting through life. That, I think, is the modern malady. We are drifting, allowing the stream of our culture to push us where it wants us to go. We are working for more and more stuff. We are sending our kids into more and more activities and not seeing them enough. We are busy so we don't connect with our spouses. We expect our spouses to meet all our needs. We feel dissatisfied, but we can't identify why?
Now please understand; I do not have all of this figured out. That's one of the reasons I write! As I blog, I remind myself what I should be doing, and should be focusing on. But these are things I have thought deeply about. My husband and I had to work to get our marriage strong, because it did not start out that way. We had to fight to stay strong when our son died, and everyone told us that our marriage now faced a crisis. I had to make the decision to give up what would have been a lucrative career because I wanted to watch my kids grow up. And my husband is right now struggling with how much he should work, given that the kids will be out of the house in four short years.
We live in a poisonous culture, and I don't want it to poison me or my family. And so I challenge everything we do. Why am I doing this? Is this necessary? I want to make sure that at the end of my life, I can look back and at least say, for better or for worse, I made choices to do what I did. I'm not blaming anyone else; I deliberately thought about it and prayed about it.
So that's who I am, and that's why I blog. I want to live deliberately, especially in my marriage, in my parenting, and in my home. I hope in these writings that I will both inspire you on towards purpose and meaning, and give myself the occasional kick in the pants, too. I want us all to live for God, not for our culture.
From now on, then, when I write a post, I'm going to ask myself, does this fit? Am I urging people to live deliberately, to stop drifting? And if I am, I'll post it. If I'm not, I may leave it. I want you all to know who I am, so that you know what you'll get when you come here.
So that's me. Now, who are you? Why are you here? What do you like? I'd love to know!
It is Saturday afternoon as I write this, and I am sitting on a dock in eastern Ontario, watching six geese fight it out on a lake. The air is filled with the sounds of birds, and the crystal clear lake seems to be smiling at me. All is peaceful.
And yet my heart was not peaceful for the last week. I know I have written about this before, but I struggle so much between the two extremes of wanting to rest and wanting to work. At times I go on a working jag, and I spend all my free time writing and fixing my blog or setting up Facebook or planning my next speaking campaign.
Other days I just want nothing more than to knit and think up new things to put in my crockpot.
I was having some of those latter days last week. I have been traveling so much this spring that it is wearing on me, and I found myself saying to God, "Can't I just stay home? Can't you let me off the hook sometimes?"
Of course, God just smiled, because it wasn't Him who overcommitted me to so many engagements this spring; that was my own folly and my own pride.
And last Friday I pulled up my bootstraps and got myself in my car as I drove two hours to a retreat where 150 women were awaiting me, excited.
As soon as I arrived I felt convicted. These women were so excited to be together, and for me it seemed like more time away from my family, when I just wanted to knit. And to top it all off, I had forgotten one of the four knitting needles necessary to knit the pair of socks I'm working on at home. So I couldn't even knit in my downtime to relax.
But the first thing that happened as I arrived was we were each asked to take a "blessing"--an inspirational thought printed out. I chose one, and it said,
I have given each of you a gift, for you to use to bless others. Go and bless those I give to you.
I smiled. I had been saying to God, "is it necessary for me to speak? Do I really make a difference? Is this really what you want me to spend my time on?" And He said a big, loud, "Yes!"
I had a wonderful feedback from the weekend, and the idyllic setting helped me to just quiet my heart. I spoke Friday night, and Saturday morning, and Saturday night, and Sunday morning, yet I had all Saturday afternoon to rest and think and pray and type.
It's Saturday now, though this post won't be up until Monday. And again I am struck by God talking to me about purpose. I told the women this morning, as I have mentioned on this blog before, that the two big lies that our culture believes are, "You deserve to be happy", and "you would be happy if you just tried a little harder." And even though I know these things are lies, I tend to fall into them. I tend to think that the purpose of life is for me to relax and have fun, and hence work interferes with my purpose.
But work is our purpose. I am not saying htat we all need to be superwomen, but there is a balance, isn't there? Our lives should mean something. We are put on this earth to get to know God, to learn to serve Him, and to introduce others to Him. There is great joy in that. Everything else is secondary. Part of getting to know God, of course, is also learning to abide in His rest, to appreciate quiet moments, to find joy in solitude. It is not that we need to be super busy all the time. And yet getting to know God also involves finding what we were created to do.
For whatever reason, and I don't mean this in a proud way, I was created to communicate truths about God to people. I feel hopelessly inadequate for the task. I do not spend two hours in contemplation everyday. There are days when my prayer life is rather abysmal. And yet God still pushes me out there, and He still does wonderful things through me--or perhaps I should say despite me.
Others of us have been chosen for different things. I am in awe of some of the mom blogs I read, and the creativity some of you have, especially with large families. You know how to love, and live, and cook, and find joy. Others of you are just so organized, and you teach the world and lead by example. Some of you are born teachers, or born nurses, or whatever it may be.
Don't take that for granted. Don't think "I'm only doing this until retirement," and then I can rest, or "I'm only going to be this buys until the kids grow, and hten I can calm down." Perhaps your life will be less busy, but don't ever let it be less meaningful.
I think we believe too much that we work hard now in order to rest--as if resting is the goal of life. We would be happier and more at peace, I think, if we took periodic rest now so that we could know God, feel God, and thus be energized to live for Him, not just now, but forever. We are not to work ourselves out of work; we are to rest enough that we can focus on God and continue to work, in whatever capacity He calls us, until we go home.
So I will keep asking God to make more more excited about work, and to help me take the rest I need when the opportunity presents itself. And I will stop telling myself that my goal in life is to have limitless time to go on vacation and knit. Knitting is wonderful, but I can do that while I work. If only I remember my needles.
What about you? Do you struggle with getting motivated to work? Let me know so I don't feel like the only lazy one!
This October, during Simplify Your Life Month here at To Love, Honor and Vacuum, we've been talking about going to God to find your purpose, figuring out what you really want to do and are called to do, and getting rid of the rest.
Today I want to give you a quick bit of encouragement.
When you're trying to figure out your purpose, chances are you think of something big. That's what we do in our society; we measure things by size. We think, the bigger, the better! We want to accomplish a ton. We want our kids to be doctors or lawyers; we want to grow our churches to thousands of members; we want to afford a bigger house, have a huge ministry, have our kids get all A's and have all their friends want to hang out at our house. We want to do things large.
It's not a new phenomenon. Way back in the Old Testament, when the people of Judah had been in exile in Babylon and were permitted to go back home and rebuild the temple, the work was going slowly. The temple was smaller than Solomon's, and the people were sad and discouraged. And then prophet Zechariah asked, "Who despises the day of small things"? (Zech. 4:10).
God doesn't. God doesn't mind small things, for it's in those small things that God shows Himself. He isn't as concerned about your kids' marks as He is about their hearts. He isn't as worried about the size of your ministry as He is about the effectiveness of it. He's the shepherd who would leave 99 sheep and go after the 1.
So don't despise the day of small things.
If you're looking at your life, and you feel that your purpose is just to be home and raise your kids and create a nice environment for your family right now, that's fine. Don't despise the day of small things.
There's nothing wrong with dreaming big, and there are times when God calls us to do something big. But there are also times when God calls us to do something relatively small. My friend John Patrick, who is now a retired pediatrician and professor as well as quite the philosopher, has spent his career in missions and apologetics and starting a new Christian university. He has done many amazing things. But he was not raised in a Christian home. And he remembers, as a child, his neighbour in England, an old woman who didn't do very much, but who told him that she was praying that he would grow up to be a doctor who would do missions work. And he did.
That's all she did. She prayed. But God used those small prayers to do so much.
Some of us feel hectic and disconnected in our lives because we're doing too much, and we need to get rid of stuff so that we can simplify our purpose and live it out.
Others of us, though, are not necessarily doing too much but we still feel dissatisfied and not at peace. And sometimes that's because we haven't yet learned the lesson not to despise the day of small things.
If your life feels small, that doesn't mean it's not large in God's currency. So don't despise the day of small things. Don't worry if your life doesn't seem big enough. Simply go to God on a regular basis and ask for His direction. If there's somewhere else He wants you to go or something else He wants you to do, He'll tell you. He wants you to do it of course; it's up to Him to let you know. You don't have to turn yourself into a pretzel trying to hear some voice that may not be leading you any differently anyway.
Just stay in touch with God, and you'll hear when He wants you to change course. So until you hear that, have peace. You're doing fine, even if what you're doing seems like a small thing.
Have you ever longed to hear God's voice, and tortured yourself over it? Have you ever hda to find peace in doing small things? Let me know in the comments!
Some of us are. We're not comfortable with plans. We want to leave life open to possibilities. We want to be open to God, not put constraints on Him, and just let life happen!
I think that attitude definitely has positive aspects. I know there are times in my life when I need to learn to go with the flow more and I need to stop trying to control everything. Sometimes things just aren't working, and we need to throw up our arms in exasperation and head to Dairy Queen.
I've done that on some homeschooling days, when nobody is getting anything done, everybody is sniping at everybody else, and it's better just to call it a day. So we head out on an impromptu field trip, or we decide to scrap the books and curl up under a blanket to watch a Jane Austen movie.
Sometimes you need to go with the flow at other times. You have your week planned ahead of you, and a friend calls. Her little boy has had an accident, and she has to be at the hospital with him. Can you take her two little girls? You can't say no, but there go all of your plans. Rather than stressing about it, it's better just to realize that your plans are toast, and embrace your new reality! Otherwise you'll just end up grumpy at everybody.
But even though we need to go with the flow at times, and even though we need to open to God's Spirit, I don't think this lackadaisical attitude towards life is the best one. Most of life has to be intentional. When we are not intentional about where we are going, or why we are going there, we're going to end up going nowhere, and then wonder why.
I mentioned in my column last Friday that nobody ever drifts together; they only ever drift apart.Many people are living their lives without really being intentional. They're raising their kids, but they don't have a good idea what they're raising them for. They believe in God, but they haven't ever thought through how they're going to pass on that belief to their children. They want a good marriage, but they haven't though through what that entails.
And until we do, we won't be effective. You can have all the emotional and spiritual resources in the world to make your family strong, but unless you sit down and intentionally use those resources, your family won't benefit.
Too many things pull us apart: time, technology, jobs, responsibilities. Very few pull us together. I know so many families who let their teens work so hard at part-time jobs that they don't have time for youth group or church. Those kids are making all their friends at school, but don't really have a Christian peer group. Or then there are the dads who are super-involved at church and super-involved in their work, and they figure that their kids will somehow pick up their faith by osmosis, even though they take no time to talk to their kids or mentor their kids or even play with their kids.
One of the best ways to counter the drift that so often happens in our lives is long term planning. I have two friends, a husband and wife team, who spend much of August strategically planning for their family. They ask themselves:
1. Where do we want to be in five years? 2. Where do we want to be in two years? 3. Where do we want to be in one year?
And then they figure out how to get there! And over the last few years, as their daughters have grown and they've realized that their time as a family is short before everyone grows up and moves on, they've made it a priority to spend more time as a family. They've gone on medical missions trips together. They've taken vacations. They've deliberately done things, even in the midst of their busy lives, because they had to.
This family lives in a small town where large churches with mega resources for great youth groups don't exist. They've had to create a youth group out of the kids' friends, and make sure that they have a good set of peers who are being discipled. They've had to take the responsibility for their kids' Christian education, because it wasn't happening at their church.
And in the meantime, they've made sure that their children learned some job skills and other skills they would need when they left home. But they did it by taking August to plan.
They mapped out their vacation schedules, months in advance. They are both professionals (they're both doctors), so they've figured out what conferences they would go to that year based on whether the kids could go and whether it could be a family activity. They've scheduled in the kids' stuff.
And they've decided what extra-curricular activities they were going to do, and when. If they saw a certain month was getting busy for work, they deliberately planned some romantic nights and weekends the month before and the month after.
And they prayed. They brought their multi-coloured highlighters, their full sized calendars, and their Bibles and journals, and they spent a weekend praying through their year.
It's a great idea, because when you don't, life happens, and you drift along with the current. You don't realize that you don't actually want to be swimming in that direction.
When your child comes to you in September and announces he wants to take karate, you can't think of a good reason to say no, so you sign him up. But you don't realize that lessons are Thursday nights, and Thursday is the only night all of you have free during November and December, so that was supposed to be your family games' night. If you had planned, you would have known that.
I find men often appreciate a bit of strategic planning because it's already how they think. They like having things mapped out, perhaps more than we do. They like knowing where they're going. And if you can turn it into a romantic getaway with multi-coloured highlighters, more power to you!
I have found more and more that time is sneaking up on me, and I have to be intentional about what we're doing as a family. So this August, Keith and I are taking off for a four-day trip to be together and to pray through this year, while doing a bunch of biking, too. Don't let the summer go by without thinking about what you really want your next year to look like. Take some time and pray and plan with your honey. Make it fun for him, too. Ask the important questions. And then you're far less likely to feel swept away by tides you can't control.
Every Friday my syndicated column appears in a bunch of newspapers in southeastern Ontario. I've been writing these columns every week for 8 years now. I've written almost 500 of them. That's a lot. And sometimes I wonder why I keep doing it. But it's columns like these that make it matter to me. It's not that I think it's particularly great; it's just the opportunity to speak what I know is truth into people's lives, in the hopes that they may make even a small change. I like the columns that simply challenge people's thinking (like last week's), but it's the ones that challenge behaviour that I really pray have an impact. And this is one of those!
Here's this week's!
Messages in bottles have been the stuff of folklore for centuries. Dying, desperate sailors have hurled them. Curious children have launched them. Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel based on them, but don’t read it—or watch the movie—unless you already have a prescription for antidepressants.
The story I find most interesting about such bottles, though, comes from an experiment when two bottles were dropped off the Brazilian coast simultaneously. One drifted east, washing up one hundred and thirty days later off the coast of Africa. The other drifted northwest, landing in Nicaragua one hundred and ninety days later. They started in exactly the same place. They ended up half a world away from each other.
Something similar is at play with human relationships. We can never drift together; we can only ever drift apart. When you’re not paying attention to your relationship, you won’t end up closer. You’ll only end up separate. If you want to go through life in tandem with someone, you have to be intentional about it.
Have you ever been misty-eyed at a wedding, knowing that this couple was perfectly compatible and would last forever, only to be blown away fifteen years later by the divorce announcement? How did that happen? How can two people who were so close end up so far apart?
It happens little by little, wave by wave, as different currents catch you. One night he staggers home from work, exhausted, and instead of eating at the table with her, he grabs dinner, puts his feet up, and watches TV. She’s tired, too, so after the kids go to bed she retreats into the study to surf internet blogs. A few more times that week they recreate the scene, and soon it’s become the evening routine. Once couples stop communicating, laughing, and sharing, then the only thing that binds them together is the children. And eventually children aren’t enough.
Too many of us drift through life. We figure our spouses are always going to be there, our kids are always going to love us, and our jobs are always going to be secure. So we don’t put in the hard work of keeping lines of communication open, or building up goodwill, because we’d rather concentrate on ourselves, and what we want. We are, after all, selfish beings, and most of us, if we can get by with laziness, will try. We’re naturally drawn to drifting.
Young adults are today’s quintessential drifters. About 30% of twenty-somethings still live at home, hanging out in their parents’ basement, not pursuing career plans because they’re enjoying the carefree life of computers and video games. Eventually real life will sort itself out, right? Wrong. In those drifting years, they’re missing out on valuable time when they could be saving for a downpayment, increasing their marketable skills, or building meaningful relationships. Drifting is preventing real life—adult life—from arriving.
Drifting is destructive, and I don’t think it’s even that fun. We’ve become so accustomed in our society to think that the absence of work is the pinnacle of happiness that we’ve forgotten that it’s sometimes in that work—whether it’s work on relationships, work on stretching ourselves to achieve a goal, or working at our jobs—that we derive the deepest satisfaction.
Summer is a time to relax, and most of us desperately need it. But in your relaxation, don’t drift. Instead, take the time to plan. Go for walks in the beautiful sunshine and figure out what’s important to you. What is your purpose here? What are you aiming for? How are you going to get there? Since we can’t drift towards happiness, we had better start being more deliberate about it.
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In our hectic lives, everyone is searching for that elusive thing called "balance", where we feel like we're living out our priorities, we're able to get the rest we need, but we're still being purposeful.
What if the whole idea of balance is more like a millstone around your neck than it is a real thing to aim after, though?
Let me explain. Balance, in and of itself, says that some things must lose. It says that you have to put less of an emphasis on one thing so that you can put more of an emphasis on something else. To aim for balance is really to aim for a constant series of trade-offs. You decide that this will have to go, that you can't do this, all so that you can do this.
It's not exactly an easy psychological process.
What if there's a better way? A bunch of very disparate but interesting things have led me to this conclusion. First, I was reading Kathy Peel's book The Family Manager while staying at a friend's home recently.
Her point is that many housewives are extremely capable when it comes to organizing work or organizing big functions at church, but we can't seem to organize our homes. The solution? Take what you're good at and apply those same principles at home. In other words, work to your strengths.
I've read something similar in another book recently, which even though I disagreed with much of it, that one part I thought was useful. Forget balance; instead, figure out what you're good at. What makes you feel alive? What gets you excited? Now concentrate on maximizing your time for that.
At the same time, I've been delivering a number of messages at various speaking engagements about finding your purpose in life. And it occurs to me now that if we apply all three of these principles to our lives, we'd be a lot happier than if we just sought balance. So here's what such a life would look like:
1. Figure out your purpose. What is it that God is calling you to right now? Where does He want you investing your time, your money, your energy? Sometimes there may be just one area; some of us have several areas. I feel called to speak, to homeschool, and to lead the Bible quizzing program with our youth at church. One of those areas is simply my specific responsibility (my family). God always calls you first and foremost to your family. The others are more where I am using my gifts and serving in my particular church.
When you figure out where you are most called, then it's easier to emphasize those areas. Forget everything else. Let it all fall by the wayside. We don't need to be "balanced", doing everything in moderation. We need to be sold out to the areas where God has called us!
Figure out where God has called you, and ditch the rest. Yes, the other stuff needs to get done. But God will call someone to do that other stuff. Your responsibility is just to live out the areas where you are called.
I believe that we are always called primarily to our families and to the people who are closest to us. Those are the people that God has trusted us with to show them Jesus. We are also called to our local body of believers, to serve in at least some capacity. I don't think having children gives you an excuse not to serve. We all can be serving somewhere, because without us the church can't function. So ask God to show you in what one area you can serve that will make a difference.
2. In those areas where you feel called, work to your strengths. Maybe you don't cook. Maybe you never will learn to love cooking or cook very well. That's okay. Stop beating yourself up about it. Learn to make 7 meals well, and rotate them every week. You're allowed. Maybe your real gift is in making a fun home where you play lots of games and create an atmosphere where people just plain have a roaring good time, even if the house is never in tip top shape.
That's who you are. Stop trying to become someone you're not. What are your strengths in your family? Play to them. Do the things that you do well, and then figure out how to minimize the other tasks which do need to get done so that you have more time for your strengths. Don't strive for balance, because in your case, balance means spending more time on stuff that frustrates you and makes you miserable, and less on stuff that gives you life.
I was reminded of this a few years ago when I went on a craft binge. I bought painting supplies. I bought fabric to sew. I bought all kinds of stuff. And then I started doing it and hated it. I sewed my maternity clothes and they never fit quite right. I tried to stencil something and kept going out of the lines.
And all the while my knitting sat beside me, untouched. I was trying to conquer all these other crafts that I admired, instead of doing the one that I am great at (if I do say so myself) and that relaxes me. So now I proudly announce that I don't sew, I don't cross-stitch, I don't scrapbook, and I don't crochet. What I do do is knit. Everywhere. Even in line at the grocery store (I always have a pair of socks on the go in my purse).
It may not be balanced, but it's what I'm good at and it's what I enjoy. You don't need to do everything. Work to your strengths.
When you figure out what you're good at, it's easier to apply those things to your home. If you're a spontaneous person, then create a spontaneous home. Work less to lists and more to creativity. That's okay. Don't try to be someone you're not. Figure out how to get done what does need to get done, but then create a tone for your home where you're laid back, and people can drop in anytime and it doesn't bother you.
If, instead, you're very organized, then don't try to be spontaneous! Create a schedule for your day and stick to it. You'll feel better.
Often instead of working to our strengths we work to our weaknesses. We see the things we're not good at and we spend all kinds of time trying to make ourselves better at these areas of weakness, rather than spending productive time in the areas where we do excel. If we each worked to our strengths, we'd get things done a lot more quickly and with a lot less grief.
God made you the way you are for a purpose. You do not have to be the typical Christian woman, because God may not have made you that way. He sure didn't make me that way! I function best when I have a ton of things on the go. I work really hard, and then I crash really hard, and my family loves it. We're busy, we do interesting things, we talk about interesting things, and no one day is ever exactly like the other.
That's who I am. Do you know who you are? Or are you still reading all these books that tell you that you should fit into a specific mold? I think often we mistake our identity and calling with the things in life that need to get done. Just because laundry needs to get done does not mean that you are naturally a laundry person. Just because you're looking after your children at home does not mean that you are naturally a kid person. But you can take what you are naturally good at and you can apply those things to how you manage your home, how you raise your kids, how you serve in church.
If you don't fit the mold, break it!
Just don't try to have balance, if what you mean by balance is that you do a little bit of everything. It seems to me that God calls us to live out our purpose, and to work productively six days a week, and then He calls us for one day a week to rest in Him, to have time to think, to meditate, to enjoy each other. That's the balance that we need.
So make sure that you're spending time connecting with God so that you can find your purpose. Spend time on your own everyday rejuvenating yourself so that you can live out that purpose. And then apply your strengths to living out your calling day by day. Don't be everything to everybody. Be uniquely you. And that is perfectly okay.
Are you happy? Do you feel successful? Do you feel like a strong woman?
Those questions tend to make me feel defensive. Of course I'm happy! I'm doing what I'm called to do, aren't I? And what does it matter if I'm successful, if I'm living my calling?
And besides that, happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be, as I've written here on previous occasions. The secret to happiness is to not look for it. When we look for it, we're always going to be unhappy, because we'll see all the things we don't have. When we seek instead for purpose and joy in God, we tend to, in the end, find happiness as well. But it's a by-product of a life well-lived.
To me, the main questions that encapsulate the essence of one's life are more these: Do you know what you were called to do? Do you feel a calling on your life? Do you feel energized to live out that calling? Do you experience joy on a regular basis? See how those are quite different? I find this whole quest for happiness and self-fulfillment focused a little too much on the self and not enough on God. The truth is we are not called to be happy as much as we are called to be holy. But as we live out a purpose-driven life, we will experience joy, and our lives will be richer and fuller. The key is to look to God first, and not to our own hearts.
If I have that much trouble with the idea of happiness and feeling successful being the centre of your life, you can imagine how much difficulty I had with a book I was recently sent to review: Find Your Strongest Life: What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently, by Marcus Buckingham. I didn't agree with the premise to begin with, and quite honestly, I had a hard time with a women's book that featured a picture of a guy prominently on the cover, even if he had become famous on Oprah.
The book was sent to me, I think, because it is a Christian publisher, and it's about women. Nevertheless, God is nowhere in the book, except in a brief 3-page anecdote that is cute, but does not present the gospel whatsoever. I guess the publisher is trying to branch out.
Then, the beginning of the book was focused on him (again, the self-focus that really turns me off), and it soon became quite clear he was writing from a particular perspective that I do not share. For instance, I was offended by this sentence. After talking about how women can feel stressed at work, he says, on page 38:
The good news is that this isn't stopping women from on-ramping back into work after having kids, in spite of the media stories of a new generation of women choosing to opt out.
Why is it GOOD news that women are leaving their babies and going back to work? (He later reports it as a success that the majority of women with babies are working). I can understand being neutral about it, but lauding it? That seems very strange. Later in the book he says that we should never feel guilty about choosing to work and sending kids to day care, because in surveys, what kids want is not more time with Mommy, but for Mommy to be happy.
So what? Since when do children know what's good for them? And given the abysmal rate of kids retaining their faith, and the horrible rate of kids being involved in sexual activity at a young age, maybe we need more parents around.
My initial reaction, then, was quite negative. Nevertheless, there were some very good tips in the book, and some excellent strategies to maximize the positive moments in your life, rather than the negative ones. I'm using some of them already, but he put a name to them and explained them in a way I hadn't heard for before, which was helpful. And he reminded me of some other things I haven't been doing. So while I may not agree with the philosophical underpinning of the book (and I definitely don't think it's a Christian book, publisher notwithstanding), there's some good stuff there.
I think, over the next week, I'll point out some of that good stuff, and share it here with you, bit by bit. Let me just leave you today with some of the observations that he has about the state that women find themselves in today, with which I have no argument.
First, over the last few decades, women have become steadily unhappier, while men have become happier. Having more choice has made women unhappy, largely because when we have choice, we always are reminded of what we are not doing well. Too many of us are trying to multitask all the time, and it's stressful. Choice doesn't make you happy, even if you think it's a good thing.
Second, women became unhappier as life goes on, and men become happier. We start off happier, more sure of ourselves, with more hope for our futures. But as we have kids, and move into the work world, we lose that happiness, while men gain it. Why? I think because again we are feeling guilty for what is not being done.
Also, ironically, women with children are more unhappy than women without kids, even married women. And this is true across cultures, in huge surveys, as he has shown, so I do believe him. It is not that we don't love our kids; it is that they give a level of stress to our lives that is really difficult to integrate.
That's where women find ourselves. We are stressed. We are unhappy. We feel like we have too much on our plate. The solution, though, that I would offer that he did not, is to find a purpose outside of yourself. He does this in a secular way, asking women to find what they were born to be, and then to live that out in their career lives and their stay at home lives (there are no real examples in the book of women who have completely stayed at home, though he says the book is for women of all walks of life). And I believe that we should find what we were born to be.
But the question of being born to be something is essentially one of calling. How can we be "born to be" something absent God? The author is himself a Christian, so I think he knows that, he just isn't saying it explicitly in the book. But we need to figure out what God is calling us to, and then rely on Him for peace in that calling. We'll talk later this week how to do that effectively to experience joy, but if you've never had it out with God about what you were called to do, you need to. Without a sense that God is calling you to something, whether it's your family, or your work, or a ministry, or even just how to live your life, then whenever frustrations come you will wonder if you are outside of His will. They will be magnified.
So seek out His calling. Pray with your spouse about it. Talk to your friends about it. And then focus on how to live it out. If we are doing something purposefully, it will always have more joy than if we are just living in the moment.
The difference, I think, is that both take very moral approaches to it. You will never be happy or fulfilled, they say, if you violate moral standards. So you need to think in terms of right and wrong. I didn't get this impression from the book. What he was saying is find those moments when you feel strongest, when you feel everything coming together, and search after those moments. But what if those moments are when you're sitting in front of a slot machine? What if they're when you're with your lover? That's not exactly the recipe for a joyful life, is it? We need to weigh what we want to do in terms of whether or not it's right.
And the other thing that Covey really gets at is that we are called to be meaningful, not happy. And when we are meaningful, when we find our purpose, our lives are better. So he spends so much time talking about what you want to accomplish--not just in terms of what matches your personality (which is what this author says), but in terms of what values you want to see evidenced in your life. And you follow those values even if it means your life is a little more complex and difficult. Do you see the difference? It's starting with values (or God), and then coming to us. This book seems to start with us. So I don't get it. It just doesn't FEEL like a Christian book, regardless of the publisher.
One more thing. Perhaps the reason that women are becoming more unhappy, too, is that we are expecting too much out of life. We are expecting that it will be easy to meld a career and kids. We are expecting to experience happiness all the time, and we don't. And we blame others. But perhaps the problem is not our lives, but our expectations. We can find great joy being at home, and perhaps, if we as women celebrated it more in an honest way (without pretending that being home is always perfect), we would stop having these expectations that at all times we must have a powerful career and a home life and a stock portfolio. Being a mom is a wonderful thing. It is a privilege. You don't have to do it all. And that is a good thing.
We all want a calling in life. We want to know our purpose. We want to know that we're on the right road. We search for affirmation that this is what we're supposed to do. And I think we do that the harder the road is that we're on.
For instance, if you stay home with your kids, and you gave up work to do so, you may think God called you there. You may be sure God called you there. But then, as the months and years go by, and you find yourself tired, you constantly second guess yourself. If this really what I'm supposed to be doing? Is there somewhere else God wants me? Am I really making a difference? Have you ever been there?
It's hard, especially if money is tight. Are you just doing what you want to do, or are you doing what God wanted you to do?
And it's true in whatever place we find ourselves. I used to second guess myself about homeschooling all the time. I don't so much anymore, but I certainly did. When we started homeschooling, we felt a definite call. Keith and I both did, and the first few years were great. But then I'd have days where I just couldn't get anything done of my real life, because homeschooling was there. So I'd have a writing deadline, or a speaking engagement, and I would be so stressed. And we'd wonder if I was really supposed to be doing all of this. Or there would be days when the girls would fight, or when Katie would refuse to do her work (quite a frequent occurrence for her when she was younger), and I'd wonder if someone else could teach them better. How could we be called to homeschooling if things were going so badly?
In retrospect I can see how wonderful it's been for our family, and how educationally beneficial (they're both about two years ahead now), but it doesn't always feel that way in the midst of it. And when you're frustrated, and you're tired, and things aren't going the way you envisioned, you start to wonder if maybe you misread God.
I certainly felt that way all last week. I was getting ready for a really big speaking engagement I had over the weekend, where I spoke at an Ontario-wide retreat for the Salvation Army women's division. Several hundred women were there, and it was stressful getting ready. I still had to homeschool. I still had to make dinner. I hate it when I'm too busy to do regular housework things, because then I feel like I'm letting down my family. I still had responsibilities at church that weren't getting done well. And it was hard.
I was probably feeling as low as I have in a long time in regards to my calling to be a speaker/writer. I just didn't have the time and energy for my family, and I figured something had to give. Something wasn't right.
Then I went and had probably the most blessed weekend speaking I have ever had. The response on Sunday was amazing. People dealt with some really difficult strongholds in their lives. I had more positive confirmation about speaking than I ever have. It was truly amazing.
And it reminded me that we can't rely on what we're feeling in the moment to determine what our calling is. If you feel a calling on your life from God, write it down. Write down the moment you heard it. Write down what you heard. Write down how you know. And then, when times get rough, go back to it. I think we base our idea of our calling too much on the day-to-day feelings. After all, just because we're called to something doesn't mean it's going to be easy. In fact, the more important thing we're called to, probably the harder it will be. You have to take time, I think, every year, just to get away with God, even for a few hours, and wrestle with Him about His vision for your life. Do it at a time when you're not depressed or anything. And then just listen.
If you don't feel peace on a daily basis, it doesn't mean you're not doing what you're supposed to do. Sometimes it's just real life, and life can be hard. I think we have this mistaken idea that if we're in the middle of God's calling, life will be easy, we will always feel peace, and we will always see success. It's not true. So don't second guess yourself. Instead, plan for specific times to hear from God during the year, and really listen. Otherwise we'll just be like that boat it talks about in the book of James, tossed to and fro with every wave.
Life is tough. Whatever you are called to is likely going to be tough. So don't despair! Just look for God's strength everyday, and remember:
There is always time in the day to accomplish God's priorities for that day.
I spoke at Write Canada, the Canadian Christian writers' conference, this weekend. Made some great connections, renewed old friendships, and had some time away from home just to dream and ask God about my direction.
It was interesting, because I went to that conference thinking I should be going in a certain direction, and came away with a whole lot of other priorities. And I'm excited!
As a member of the faculty at the conference, people had an opportunity to sign up to talk to me and ask my advice. And what I found myself saying, over and over, was: "find your passion".
People would want to know what direction to go, and how to market, and what niches to target, and I said, "find your passion".
I think that's true in everybody's life, whether we write or speak or not. God has given us all passion for something, and we will feel most alive and purposeful when we're able to live out that passion. The problem comes when we try to live out a passion that isn't ours.
Now please--I'm not saying that if housework isn't your passion you can let your house go. We all need a minimum level of cleanliness so that you don't fear catching communicable diseases in your kitchen! But it's within our areas of passion that we leave our legacy. So, for instance, if you have a passion for the Word, you need to be teaching and participating in a Bible study group. If you have a passion for prayer, you need to start an online prayer ministry where you can pray for other moms in the same stage in life. If you have a passion for helping kids from broken families, you need to figure out how to create a safe environment at your house where they can hang out.
But if we ignore our passions, and say that something else is more lucrative, or more logical, or more responsible, we risk running ourselves dry.
Now there will be some periods in our lives when our passions will mostly be home focused, whether it's with raising babies or managing a whole bunch of teens. But even during those times, we can become passionate about creating a fun homelife. If we're simply trying to keep the wheels turning, and making sure that the fridge isn't empty, and worrying about the mundane of life we lose it. But if we see those mundane things in the context of a broader passion, our purpose becomes more clear.
And perhaps I should be talking purpose instead of passion, because purpose implies that there is One who gives it to us, whereas passion can be self-focused. So I do believe that often our purposes and our passions coincide. I think that God often gives us passion in our area of purpose. And that passion usually relates to doing something that will impact others and leave a legacy.
It is wonderful when our passion can actually start to bring us an income. I often tell my girls to figure out what it is that they love doing and that God has gifted them in doing, and then together we'll try to figure out a career path so that they can do those things! I think the most effective people in business are those who are working in areas that they love. Probably the definition of a happy life is to get paid for doing something that you would do for free anyway.
This summer I have a ton to do, and I mean a TON. This week alone I have to finish a book proposal, get three articles written, and write up a business plan for a speaker's training course I'm starting this summer. But I'm so excited about all of it!
If you don't have passion in your life right now, pray that God will show you an area that you are excited about, and that He will show you a path where you can start living out that passion. I think too often we live lives that are dreary by default. We get sucked up into the routine of life, with its TV and its internet and its noise. And we can live day by day like that, until those days turn into years.
So what is your passion? Is it art or creativity? Is it the Word? Is it children, or marriage, or education, or homeschooling? I would say mine is marriage, and helping women get out of ruts and live purposefully for God. That's what I talk about and write about, and I do love it. But share with me yours. It's summer; it's a great time for reflection and prayer and planning. Why don't we take it to make sure that next year we can start to live out some of these things that God has put in our hearts.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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by Stephen Covey and 
by Scott Peck. Both have to do with how to find peace in everyday life, and how to find meaning in life.
