Month: August 2013

For as long as I can remember, “imagination” has had a good rep.  And I have had a good supply of it.  As a kid I didn’t just “wrap Christmas presents”—I performed surgery on anxious patients with nothing but pink safety scissors and a roll of Scotch tape.  I didn’t “iron clothes” for my mother—I hosted a televised special on how to get wrinkles out of an Oxford.  Imagination, I quickly learned, was a great way to pass the time.  And the sorrow.

If I didn’t make the team, I imagined I was the star player.  If the cute boy didn’t like me, I imagined that he did.  And if the cute boy turned out to be a real jerk, well that was the beauty of imagination!  In five seconds flat I could turn him into the man of my dreams.  I always assumed I’d quit daydreaming once some of these dreams were actually realized.  After all, when I had the amazing job, and the exciting life, and the man of my dreams I wouldn’t need to daydream, right?

Unless I didn’t have those things.  Unless somewhere along the way I had created dreams so lofty no reality could compete with them.  No man fulfill them.  No set of circumstances live up to them.   I was probably in my twenties when I finally realized daydreaming could be dangerous.  That it could pave a fast track to discontentment.

I think a lot about it now as I raise two young girls—girls who have already fallen in love with the notion of princesses and fairytales.  On the one hand, I’m a major advocate for imagination.  If I were a fictitious character I’d be Anne of Green Gables, scarcely able to fathom the dreariness of a world without imagination.  But as a woman who’s a smidgen wiser than I used to be, I sidle up to it warily.  Imagine we’re in a fort cooking dinner out of pine cones?  I’m all about it!  Imagine we’re digging for dinosaur bones?  Let’s do it!  Imagine one day every fairy tale wish will come true and life will be perfect?  Don’t do it.  Oh, my sweet little girls, don’t do it.

Because the truth is, you and I were never made for the fairytale.  We weren’t made to live comfortable, easy lives that always make us feel good.  We were made to live one real life, with a real God, who offers real hope in a real and broken world.  My previous post has opened up a floodgate of real Moms sharing their real stories.  It has made me cry, and pray, and rejoice that I am not alone.  I am not journeying with Cinderella and Snow White.  I am journeying with real people—overcomers in Christ with real testimonies.  And I believe that’s exactly the way God intended it to be.  Shortly before leaving His disciples, Jesus warned them that suffering was coming.  He said He was preparing them for it so that in HIM they may have peace.  And then He made this promise: “In this world, you will have prince charming, perfect kids, great hair, loads of free time trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”  (John 16:33)

The answer to the reality of pain—the reason we can stand up under it—has always been and always will be found in Jesus.  That’s the mistake I made so many years ago–when I didn’t make the team, when the cute boy didn’t like me.  I didn’t run to Jesus to remind me that my worth is securely kept in Him.  I didn’t let Jesus satisfy my longing to be known and loved.  Instead I crafted a really puny version of fulfillment and daydreamed about it.  And as soon as the daydream was over, so was the satisfaction.

If there’s one thing I’m realizing the more I blog, it’s that I don’t know your story.  I don’t know whether you love to daydream, or haven’t done it since you were five years old.  I don’t know if the life you’re living right now fills you with joy and peace, or if it leaves you empty and longing for more.  The only thing I know, with wholehearted certainty, is that Jesus is passionate about you.  He is passionate not only to rescue you (John 3:16; Romans 6:23), but to give you an abundant life in Him (John 10:10).  Don’t settle for the daydreams, the way I did for so long, foolishly believing they’re as good as it gets.  They are just a shadow of joy and fulfillment.  Jesus is the real thing.

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Do you ever feel like there’s a gigantic gap between the woman you are and the one you want to be?  I do.  The woman I want to be lives in my mind, somewhere between the endless to-do lists and the names of all the Sesame Street muppets.  She is innately patient.  Fearlessly radical.  She believes that God is faithful, even when it feels like He’s forgotten her.  She always chooses the better thing–to feed her soul instead of her flesh, to submit instead of defy, to rejoice instead of complain.  She never snaps at her children or nags her husband.

In fact, the only person she ever irritates is me.  She eludes me and haunts me at the same time.  She is the woman I think about five seconds after I say the thing I shouldn’t have said.   The woman I think about when my kids are in bed and I’m wishing I hadn’t been so impatient with them.  I think about her when I meet someone really sunny who never seems to doubt God.  And I think about her on the really cloudy days when I feel guilty for not climbing out of my own discouragement.

I used to think I could bridge the gap between her and me in one giant leap.  Maybe a Beth Moore conference?  A weekend prayer retreat?  But I never could make the leap.  At times I thought I had, and then inevitably I would disappoint myself.  Struggle with the same old sin.  Fail in the same old way.

Sometime this summer it finally clicked with me.  The journey from me to her is a small step journey.  It is not made up of grandiose conferences or life-altering experiences.  It is made up of millions upon millions of tiny moments.  Paul David Tripp taught me this when he wrote, “the character and quality of our life is forged in little moments.  We tend to back away from the significance of these little moments because they are little moments.  [But] these are the moments that make up our lives.”

In context, he was writing about all the little thoughts, words, and choices that shape a marriage and set the stage for the future.  But I am finding this “small-moment approach” is a great way to live all of life.  I have come to pray a very simple prayer throughout the day.  Whether I’m believing a lie, battling idols, or itching to erupt, in the heat of the moment all I pray is, “God, help me win this small-moment battle!”  That’s all I focus on.  I don’t think about overcoming every battle, or making a personal sanctification plan, or donning a cape and painting supermom across my forehead.  I just focus on the one small battle before me, and by God’s power with Christ’s help, I fight to win.  Then, ten minutes later, when the baby dumps a bowl of spaghetti onto my mother-in-law’s carpet, I pray, “God, help me win this small-moment battle!”  And so it goes.

You build a house one brick at a time, write a book one word at a time, and live a life one moment at a time.  You and I don’t have to become the Proverbs 31 woman tomorrow.  We just have to throw ourselves upon the grace and power of Christ to live faithfully today.  To make the wise choice.  To say the kind thing.  To reject the awful thought.  To repent and get back up again.  And one day we will look back and realize that over a lifetime–over a million small moments–God grew us.  

Mother Theresa, Adolf Hitler, Martin Luther, Jessica Simpson–they all have one thing in common.  They became who they are one small moment at a time.  And so will we.

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