Warning Signs

So, one of the things that could have been a huge check mark in the "Why is everything going wrong on this trip" column was a phenomena I was ignorant of.  Apparently, schools of jellyfish migrate in to shore once a month.  In response, the life guard stations all put out these warning signs reminding everyone that jellyfish stings are painful and you are swimming at your own risk.  I thought it was hilarious.  Mostly I was coming to the beach after yoga to do my Bible studies.  The potential presence of jellyfish in the water didn't really affect me one way or the other. 

Clearly, there were people who felt the warnings signs were alarmist or who didn't value the potential pain worth the sacrifice of time in the water.  In fact, I saw a great dane in a life vest out with his/her master.  She kept trying to get the dog further in the water but the dog was having none of it.  I can't help but feel the dog had the greater wisdom. 

I went out once to dip my toes and saw these huge swaths of dark patches in the water that seemed to disappear when I approached.  I thought they were patches of seaweed but a passing stranger must have thought I was afraid because she assured me that the patches of darkness were schools of sardines.  That explained the fisherman on shore.  I love getting to experience wildlife outside of my normal experience.  I've never eaten a sardine, much less swam with one.

The jellyfish sign wasn't the only warning sign I saw either.  Near the beach I usually visited was a War Memorium that was interesting to look at until you got to the closed gate.  Clearly, this had been a something and now was not.  I had no idea what it had been built for or what purpose it served.    It looked kind of like a stadium but the "stage" area was all water.  I wondered if they did animal shows or if it had fallen apart so much that the stage was gone.  Behind ornate gates were many warning signs of various sizes.  Like most signs, it was clear they had been ignored by someone who felt the best thing to do with a warning was to write their mark on it.  Honestly, it was beautiful.  The mystery, the abandoned beauty, all of it.  I haven't been able to get it out of my head since.

It did get me thinking about warning signs though.  Why they are put up?  What imminent danger do they really signify?  

As I approached the structure it was clear that parts of it had been renovated.  It was also clear that the inside was crumbling and dangerous.  The many warning signs, not surprisingly, warned as much.  It got me thinking about the difference in the two places I had encountered that day where warnings had been set up.  One was an "at your own risk" the other made it clear it was dangerous and criminal to violate the warning.  

I think God does this for us.  There are definitely things in our life that are "permissible" but not always recommended.  You may be able to do them without getting yourself into trouble but you are definitely skirting the edge of something you don't really need to be doing.  Other things are closed doors with big warning signs.  Sure, you could climb over the fences, past the locks and signs, and feel the thrill of defying the warnings because you'll probably be fine.  

Probably...

There is beauty in knowing where to stop.  In seeing the warning for what it is.  A blessing given to us by a gracious God.  There's a difference between stepping out of your comfort zone and giving up your need for control in favor of a God who is actually in control and defying warning signs.  It can feel oddly similar.  That thrill of fear when letting go and the thrill of fear when defying authority.  So how do you tell the difference? 

The warning signs

Just like in life, our spiritual warning signs are designed to give us pause.  To slow our progress forward and make us take stock of the situation.  For me it feels like a gentle push.  I'm a rule follower, so seeing that danger in red lettering feels like a magnetic repulsion.  Giving up control feels like an infinitely patient God gently pulling my hands to remind me to let go.  What does it feel like to you?  Have you ever thought about the difference?  The difference in how it feels in your spirit?  Let's learn to recognize the subtle push of a warning sign verses the subtle pull of being asked to give up control.

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Expectation vs Anticipation

Welcome to part two!  If you haven't read Anticipation vs Expectation, I highly recommend you start with that.

I long for adventure.  It's a big part of how God created me and I'm just now discovering that in my life.  That it's okay to long for the things God made me to long for.  Ultimately, that longing for adventure is a longing for God who wants to take me on an adventure.  I was thinking of that while on vacation with my hubby and the fact that it's the company, not the setting, that makes the trip.  Going away from the "normal" of our every day lives somehow gives us eyes to see the beautiful, the amazing and the exciting, but it's usually the companionship that makes the whole experience valuable.  If you read last weeks blog you will know I had a list of expectations that I was trying to set aside for, the much preferred, anticipation.  Boy, oh boy, did God test me on that list.

If you haven't guessed already, I got to go to Hawaii for the first time in my life. As much as I talked about expectations last week I found some had settled into my mind without my notice which really polarized my experience.  More than that, God exposed those expectations to me before hand but I failed to anticipate He would challenge them.

Hawaii is a study in contrasts. Million-dollar skyscrapers next door to moldering buildings. Islands renowned for their beauty slowly being overrun by those coming to see it.  Awe and sorrow mixed up together.  I expected to see lush tropical landscapes from quaint bungalows beside the sea....yeah, nope.  I also half expected to get a lei when I got off the plane.  That didn't happen either.  Waikiki is packed full of skyscrapers competing for a view of the ocean.  I get it, its' a tourist destination, what did I expect?  I was very pleased with the hotel we chose, they gave me wine when we walked in the door and they were separate from the hustle of "the strip" which suited us just fine.

The first thing we did in Hawaii was to go to church.  God totally orchestrated this and I can't tell you how grateful I am to God for that.  We arrived too late or too early due to some old information but it wasn't "too" anything because we talked to people and ate with them and just generally felt loved and welcomed to a degree I haven't felt in a very long time at church.  I got to sing in worship with a congregation for the first time in years and I straight up wept for joy.  God started our time in Hawaii by reminding us how seldom we appreciate what is going well.  We take "well" for granted.  You walked up those stairs without tripping, isn't that amazing!  You have food in the house, isn't that spectacular?!  We notice when something is absent, not when it's present.  It was a theme that God gave me practical experience in that week. The church itself was also a school and they had been there for about 100 years.  In the middle of their playground was a huge mango tree that might have been as old.

There was a guest speaker who spoke on American Exceptionalism, an amazing speaker and historian, and I totally recommend you give it a listen, which was kind of a fire hose of information, but totally worth it. 

They gave us lei's!  We also had people talk to us for hours after the service and we didn't want to leave!  They also presented their intention as a church to pray for Muslims for 30 days, especially during Ramadan, and had booklets to help guild you through it.  I'm totally committing to this, more on that later, because we have friends who celebrate Ramadan and I love them and want them to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus.  All in all it was amazing and I can't express how much we loved this place.

I don't even remember what else we did that day because we knew nothing would top church.  Oh yeah, we did an escape room...it did not exceed the fun of church.  


I had three days on my own and I expected that I was going to sit on the beach, fully sun-blocked, and catch up on my Bible Studies and have a totally deep time with the Lord as I soaked in the beauty of His creation.  That kind of happened.  Mostly I got sand in my Bible Studies while I watched the ocean and the few people brave enough to join me on the partly cloudy, windy, cool beach.  I thought the weather was perfect.    We were watching the news carefully about the earthquake and increased activity in the volcano and the new vents.  We had made arrangements to visit the Big Island of Hawaii during our trip and wondered about safety while we prayed for the safety of the families directly affected.  Some of what God showed me during this time needs to be fleshed out in blog posts later on, so you all get to enjoy Hawaii with me for a while longer.

I have to admit that up to this point Hawaii felt very...normal.  The city feel of Waikiki could have been anywhere.  The sharp contrast in the poverty level between streets could have been any inner city.  Other than a beach, which I could walk too, I wasn't seeing the lush tropical forest I expected.  Even though I thought I had set my expectations aside, I had kept some unawares.  I'm from a very dry state.  Water is a novelty to me.  Green is a miraculous color.  While the ocean was lovely, and the green beautiful, it didn't feel amazing.  I expected...I anticipated, amazing.

Had I trained myself to see amazing in my every day to the point where I was unable to recognize the miraculously lovely?  Had I desensitized myself to adventure by seeking it in every circumstance?

Nope.

I was failing to see that the very list of expectations I had exposed last week were being challenged.  Looking back over that list I can see that God made sure every one of those expectations were broken in one way or another so I had a chance to see what I would do.  I had been practicing seeing disappointment and hardship as an exciting adventure at home but it's a totally different animal when you are not at home.  Why is that?  Why do we expect things to be different when we're away?  We are the same and we go wherever we are.  How often are our disappointments based on the belief that things should be different?

There were plenty of disappointments on the trip.  I expected to see a volcano.  I expected to be awed by unfamiliar beauty.  I expected to stay healthy.  As in most things in life, all of those expectations are a little more complicated than the few words I boiled them down too.  I was disappointed, not in the trip, but in myself for struggling to have a good attitude.  I was living as if I expected vacation meant it would be effortless.  That it would come without struggle.  That I would rest from all the "good work" I had done in enlightening myself with God's wisdom.  Yeah, God disillusioned me of that pretty quickly on vacation.  You don't own the lessons God has taught you until the test.  How insufferable would I have been if I had walked serenely through my amazingly perfect vacation, I shudder to think.

The day before we left, as I was walking to the third location on the airport complex looking for my glasses case that had my boarding pass for the airplane of what could not even be charitably called a "comedy" of errors, God reminded me to thank Him.  To thank Him for the errors, the mistakes, the fumbles and the hardships.  He reminded me to thank Him for all the things that were going right in that moment of frustration.  Praise the Lord, He took a "failure" of a day and helped me put on joy.  He redeemed my day not with what I expected  but with what He anticipated.  I almost missed out on wonder.  I almost lost the adventure.  I forgot for a moment that adventure almost always comes from the unexpected.
 

Because sometimes adventure is no toilet paper, swollen ankles, sunburns, lost important items, travel hiccups, lost cars, lost CC scares and wasted money but it's also my hubby tracking down ice, seeing lava, exploring sights we wouldn't have seen, finding the CC at a restaurant after a whole day, someone at church on mother's day asking me if it was okay to wish me a happy mothers day even though he didn't know me or my situation and delighting in what's going well even when not everything is.

Because no matter where you are, God is there with you and He delights in us delighting in Him!

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Anticipation vs Expectation

I try and stay a few weeks ahead on my blog which means that sometimes I'm writing in advance of stuff that's happening to me.  I was thinking about that this morning and thought it might be fun to use this few week gap to perform a little experiment about expectations.  

My husband is taking me some place I've never been before.  It was a fabulous surprise that he will be able to take me along on a business trip.  I talked on the blog a few weeks ago about thanking God for abundantly giving what I asked and this is definitely one of the big, huge things God has done to delight me with adventure.  I've been getting a little caught up in the planning and excitement of it all and that hasn't been sitting well with me today.  

I've been super busy the last month because of my volunteer work with a local convention.  I've been trying to embrace the adventure of it without getting bound up by the stress of my expectations of what should be done.  One of the best parts of embracing the adventure of what God is doing in your life is learning when to let go of your expectations of what you think is supposed to happen.  It's a weird juxtaposition, the embracing and letting go, but it is a truth that many people have discovered over the years.  The truth that letting go of what you expect leaves you free to receive what God is actually bringing.

So here I am, in the moments of anticipation before a grand adventure, and I feel the need to assess my expectations.

Before

Let me just start off by saying my husband is amazing and he is the 2nd best gift God has ever given me and I love him more every day.  He tried so hard to keep this trip a secret but two things happened.  He didn't think he was selected for the trip and so he told me where it was going to be.  Plus, I'm the planner of our relationship and he needed me to take care of the details.  After a month of trying to avoid stress, so I can avoid the physical consequences of stress, this was a huge.  Something to look forward too.  An adventure!  A REAL one!!!  

Yup...did you see that.  A real one.  As if all of the everyday adventure was somehow less.  

That's why I wanted to assess my expectations.  To refocus on my God.  Not to give up the delightful anticipation but to give proper credit.  Not to give up the excitement but to give up unreasonable expectations.  

So what do I expect...

• I expect to see beauty
• I expect to relax
• I expect to have new experiences
• I expect to spend less time in a room than outside

Now one of those I'm putting on myself on purpose.  The others I'm trying to keep pretty mild and sure.  I don't want to put unreasonable expectations on this adventure because the disappointment will rob my moments of the joy that lives there.  The joy placed there by God like gems for me to find on a treasure hunt.  

The danger is always in trying to mold our anticipation into something more than it's supposed to be.  Before my reevaluation today I would honestly have to say my expectations looked more like this.

• See as much as possible
• To look like I belonged with all the other beautiful people
• To have everything perfectly planned
• For nothing to "go wrong"
• For picture perfect moments, Instagram worthy days

Very unreasonable.  Unattainable even.  Which do you think

is going to be a better mindset for an adventure?  Well, lets see shall we?  

My moments may not be picture perfect but I can choose to picture them through the lens of a God who, amazingly, loves to delight me.

Are there areas of your life where expectation has taken over where anticipation should be?  Are you missing out on the joy God has especially planted just for you?  

Join me next week for the, hopefully, exciting conclusion to the exciting before and after!

#breakthrulinkup
Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop

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I'm an odd duck

If you've perused through my old blogs you may have noticed some incongruous entries.  Common wisdom dictates that I should eliminate those blogs as being "off brand" if I want to "succeed" as a blogger.  I totally get that.  It is off brand.  If I'm not speaking to a singular audience it can get confusing or disappointing, especially if you come here for one thing and get something else.  So I thought I better talk about that today.


As the title of the post indicates, I am an odd duck.  I am a mess of contradictions in a dress as Fiona sings in Shrek:

the Musical.  Everyone thinks that, you know. Everyone is a little bit right.  While the love of my Lord and Savior is the main focus of my life, and the core of my being, it isn't all.  How God has created us to be is individual but the unique place God has just for us only fits right when we're in the center of His will.  It is so easy to feel that longing for uniqueness, for specialness, and to go the way of the world.  God has hard wired some very specific things into our souls.  The longing for Him and the longing for who He has made us to be.  Whether we have accepted the gift God gave to the whole world or not, those two things are still true.  For the world, that means those two hard wired longings still pull at their core.  They just fill those longings with things other than what was intended.

As Believers, we are not immune.  I find myself swinging in a wide pendulum when I fail to be in the center of God's hard wired longings.  I try and fill the longing with the wrong things or I eliminate everything for the sake of not falling into the first trap.  Neither extreme is good.  

All of the weird, zany, contradictory bits that make up the me that God intended aren't things to be peeled away and discarded.  They are all part, in the proper place, of what God designed. 

I'm a role player, a lover of musicals, a voracious reader, an avid costume wearer, an escape room aficionado, a chronic health sufferer, childless, a volunteer, a yuppy wannabe, blunt, stubborn, a lover of comedic music and show tunes and nothing else (common catch phrase "It's not Weird Al"), proud owner of a chinneck, cat lover, lover of playing board games and a wife.  Sometimes I

put on every color of makeup I own so I can talk about serious things.  Sometimes I stay up all night to finish a volunteer project.  Each of these pieces are part of the landscape and tapestry of my life.  The landscape changes on occasion. Interests wax and wane.  But each of these things are a part of how God is using me.  

So if it seems weird that I occasionally share comic con news or my next favorite RPG game just remember you're still in the right place.  Take those moments to think about how God has made you uniquely you.  Strengths and weakness, weirdness and wonder.  It's all the you God is molding into the person He wants you to be.  And when you remember that about yourself, remember it about everyone else too.

Because sometimes adventure is settling into your own weird without it becoming a badge you hit people with.  


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