Is Life So Bland?

I've been coming to grips with a very raw, brutal, hard truth lately. (Hard for me, anyway.) It's this: Life isn't always a crisis. But it is. My definition may just be wrong. And yours might be, too.

...Completely confusing, I know... I'll get there. Here's my heart.

First of all, let's talk about "crisis."

Paramedics know what crisis is. So do firefighters, combat soldiers, law enforcement, and doctors in the ER. If you've ever been to basic training, or first on the scene of a car wreck, or found yourself in a hostile country, or some other "I'm gonna die" emergency situation (possibly even, "The house looks like World War III and mom will be home in five minutes"), you probably know what it means to find that elusive third gear.

It's "do or die trying." Everything else slows down (yes, like the movies) and you find your adrenaline-infused self operating at a speed, dexterity, brilliance and competence you never thought possible.

Well the thing is, I kind of live for those times. I live for stuff that is difficult and challenging and painful and, well, miserable (and not only for the heck of it, but especially for the greater good or when no one else wants to do it--my idea of "helping people"). So much so that sometimes, despite my attempts to adjust, "normal life" feels unbearably dull and painfully purposeless by comparison.

I'm sure part of it is my personality. But recently I'm also realizing that, until now, I have never really had to live outside of crisis mode very much.

All my growing up years were straight-up survival on our primitive family farm. It may as well have been Mars. (When your reason for getting out of bed in the morning has always been, "To live," other average reasons are just not quite as motivating.)

From there I joined the Air Force auxiliary and lived off of emergency services/search and rescue training and military discipline.

Then I helped start and then run a military youth academy, working with youth who had been into everything you could name, of which I was made the Cadet Commander (which brought new stresses and challenges, to put it mildly).

From there was living in Egypt (enough said?). Middle Eastern drama, persecution, a new and difficult language to learn. Awesome third-world-country life that I never tired of.

Three jobs, a marathon, CNA.

Next, New Tribes Bible Institute. Which was not crisis mode per se; but still rather new, exciting, lots of vision and inspiration and deadlines, and I got the occasional, brief adrenaline fix by working as a Driver's Ed teacher. (My foot still unconsciously hovers the imaginary emergency brake, so you may not want to ask me to sit in the front passenger's seat...)

My genuine ache and struggle to find significance and meaning in normalcy, my addiction to crisis mode, my stressing over lack of stress, may be hard for most people to understand. But the resulting symptom mimics something our Hollywood-saturated culture and everyone else struggles with, too: Discontentment. And unrealistic expectations.

Let's put it this way...

Maybe, you want to marry a country boy. Because you think they're all as great as Phil Robertson. And so you marry a country boy, but he's nothing like what you thought a country boy should be, definitely not romantic or as understanding as you expected, or even a gentleman... and you're crushed. Maybe, by crazy chance, he's everything you thought he would be. But you find other things about him that you don't like, and you pick on them. And you're crushed. Disappointed.

Maybe you've always wanted to be a nurse. You just want to help people, you say, but of course you want to enjoy yourself and look great doing it. And at some enlightened point in your stressful, black coffee-drugged four years of classes and clinicals that are harder than you ever thought possible, you wake up. And you realize: It's not going to be like Grey's Anatomy. And it's certainly, definitely not like Scrubs. At all.

Perhaps you've always wanted a small, primitive family farm. Want to live off the land. So you start the slow, difficult journey toward what you're sure will, someday, be romantic and picturesque--it must!--but something just seems "off." You find yourself aching from entire days of unglamorous, monotonous weed-pulling in a field that goes on and on for acres; stitching up a calf with a quilting needle in your living room; twice-a-day milkings with no respite; scampering to can and preserve a winter's worth of food for a whole family; slaughtering animals by hand in the freezing cold; working all night by the headlights of a truck to pick up all the potatoes before morning's delivery; wondering when in the world, oh dear God, there will ever be time to do laundry or cook or wash the dishes or rest your back. And there's nobody there to capture the essence of what looks a lot.. better.. than it feels.. sometimes.

Or what about this: You really, really want to be a missionary. Missionary biographies captivate you. You're "on fire" for God. And all you can think about is missions (and deep down, somewhere you won't admit, you might feel you'd be viewed as a "better Christian"). You're very compassionate and empathize with the plight of the people in, say, Somalia, and -- excitement!! -- you end up there. It's amazing and wonderful and different at first. But soon you notice things you didn't before. Like how the different food and the habits of the people are extremely annoying now, and it's a lot of work to fit in and you just want things to be how they were; and you find your compassion is dwindling because the people don't even want you there and nobody's getting saved. And you can't figure out why it's nothing like that two-month or maybe even just one-week missions trip you took, once upon a time.

Could go on and on with other situations: Marriage. The dream career. Parenthood. Retirement. The cake you baked or the picture you drew or the house you built. Disappointment. Not how it was supposed to go. Nothing ever going how it was supposed to. (Side note here being that disappointment happens and is neither rare nor wrong. Sadly, our default setting is to turn it into bitterness and cynicism, which certainly is wrong.)

The Dean of Students while I was a student at NTBI spoke in chapel one day, and said something like this about living for your personal dream, no matter how good: "If you don't achieve it, you will be depressed because you didn't; if you do achieve it, you will be depressed because you have nothing left to live for." (Queue King Solomon and the book of Ecclesiastes.) Point being, Jesus Himself is the only thing worth living for. Not even dreams that involve Jesus. Because who knows what may happen to them.

Here's something my Heaven-sent husband reminded me of the other day (paraphrased):

Part of what I'm feeling is not wrong. We are to live in crisis mode, we need to live in crisis mode, because we are living a crisis. There are people's souls, and the state of the Church, and our stance before Jesus one day, at stake. It's just hard to see from our current vantage point. And Satan, the world and our flesh use that blurriness against us.

I'm not saying we should have no expectations at all. In fact, I'm not entirely sure what I'm saying about a conclusion regarding degree of expectations. But here's what I am saying:

Thankfully-- probably because of the way I was raised-- I've never been disappointed by life in that everything is, frankly, just so much more awesome than I ever would have planned or imagined (from ice cream to my husband to my in-laws). I still get excited and giddy inside about watching a movie or getting new toothpaste or the fact that the inside of my house is warm in the winter!!!

However... most of my expectations still tend to be unrealistic because they envision a life that by necessity is much more difficult (or challenging or characterized by crisis), whereas a lot of other people's expectations are unrealistic because they envision a life that is much easier (or more comfortable or picturesque or like the movies). But neither of them are much like "normal" life. So both produce discontentment if we focus on them too strongly.

Now, God may not end up calling Joey and I to something "normal" (or even to another day of life on this earth). But He might. Because He calls the shots. We could live out our lives in Aleppo, Syria or the mountains of Tibet or in a town of 300 people in rural Wisconsin. The point is that it should not matter. The heart that is God's says, "I am Yours. You bought me. It is my joy to live for You, wherever, doing whatever!" Like Paul:

"I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength." [Philippians 4:11-13]

Obviously, this is easier said than done, and requires daily renewal by the Spirit of God. It is so much harder to learn to live content with the idea of either, or oscillate between the two, than to stick with one.

I would like to implore us all toward this:

Relish true love stories, but not chick flicks. Don't feed on things that you find produce discontentment, which are all different things for each of us. Live in the real world. I encourage you, with every breath I have... Live here, in this real, imperfect world, with real, imperfect people, acknowledging your very imperfect self, before our loving and perfect God.

Because the real world (even in all its fallen nature), when it's not being compared to grand delusions (lies), is still pretty dang beautiful.

10 Things My Dad Taught Us

I'm one of eleven crazy children raised by my parents. The indisputably most important thing they have imparted to us has been a knowledge of God and His Word. And from that knowledge of God were derived other principles, these primarily from my dad. Most of these he taught explicitly; others, in not remotely so many words, but by his own actions. I share them as a tribute to him. While admittedly far from exemplifying many of these currently, I definitely find that I nonetheless still tend to see them as what ought to be the norm for myself.



1.)     Do the hard thing…

…On purpose. Be uncomfortable. Do not even have a comfort zone – if you do, go outside of it, obliterate it, and then never go back. Do the awkward thing, the difficult thing, the sweaty thing, the distasteful thing, the miserable thing. Soon, one finds there are few actually disliked things left. “To built character,” he would say, “a person needs to do two things, at the very least, that they strongly dislike… each day.” Oh, we regularly surpassed that number... [Is it any wonder that the majority of marriages fail, in a time when difficulty is reason enough to quit?]

He summed it up something like this: “Comforts and luxury are to be enjoyed and appreciated when you have them. But don’t go looking for them.”

Perk: Everything seems relatively easy when you regularly seek out the difficult stuff.

2.)       Pain is your friend.

When you embrace pain, it doesn’t hurt as much, if at all. Make friends with it, and you won’t be fighting it anymore. The resulting relief and the freedom is almost palpable.

I first began to understand this in reality while marathon training. Running mile after mile can be both painful and boring. Originally, my approach was to grit my teeth and “gut it out.” That, however, produced a vicious inward battle: me fighting against the misery. I found that when I surrendered and accepted it—“This is going to hurt for the next three hours, and that’s okay”—that suddenly all was well. It wasn’t so hard. Nothing had changed except my attitude.

3.)       Overcome your fears.

No one should live with debilitating fear. I did not know until later how rare it is to grow up sans ordinary phobias. Spiders, heights, snakes, small spaces, germs, lightning, flying, the dark, shots? Noooope. [There is one, but it doesn’t stop me... if you know me, you know what it is! Haha.]

When I was 9 years old and we were farming with horses, I fell and my little frame ended up underneath an implement. (This particular farm accident was no one’s fault.) A metal disc sliced deep into my tiny leg, taking it and me out of action for quite awhile.

The very next morning, early, my dad carried me lovingly out to where the horses were hitched, set me up on the seat, and had me take them for a few more passes on the field I had been working the day before. I didn’t understand why at the time, nor did I ask; I assumed he knew what he was doing, and he did. My dad didn’t want his daughter to grow up with a fear of horses or a fear of disking a field.

He took the principle of “Get back up” or “Get back on” to a whole new level, and his children were the undoubted beneficiaries in every other area of life. Love isn't always accommodating.

4.)       Target your own weaknesses.

Personal growth and self-discipline are not too popular today. The message of the time is, “BE YOU.” Period. If it’s not comfortable, don’t force yourself. 

My dad, on the other hand, saw it as normal and necessary to address areas of inability or lack of natural talent. He recognized that everyone has their own God-given gifts, areas of expertise and personal strengths, but that “I’m just not good at that” or “That’s not my thing” should never be an excuse. I never remember us once calling a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, construction workers, even a vet. He, my sister and I built our barn, for goodness’ sake. His method was simple: If he didn’t know how to do something, he whipped out a manual and studied it. He talked to people and asked questions. He made observations.

No wonder it seemed like my dad could do absolutely everything—he basically could. He is a true James Bond-esque jack-of-all-trades. Not by birth, but through sheer hard work and intentional character development.

5.)       American culture is not your authority.

In fact, it’s a crock of junk. (To love America and her freedom is not the same as being characterized by her lazy, immoral, entertainment-centric lifestyle.) “My children will not be Americanized,” my father was fond of saying, frequently.

Years later, it was strange and gratifying to hear that line of his quoted with a gleeful chuckle, and a thick Arabic accent, by an old Egyptian doctor I worked with in the Middle East. Doctor “E” LOVED it. He had seen the proof of that principle as it played out in life there.

It was not difficult for me to live completely removed from American culture. American culture, after all, was not my home. 

6.)       Check how you react to “No.”

“We don’t always get what we want.” He said it so many times that I can hear it almost audibly in my mind now. He and Mama drummed into us the manner of thought that understands two simple things: Often in life, we do not get our way – and that’s okay. Sometimes we do, but not right away – and that’s okay, too.

In a time and culture that probably couldn’t even define the concept of delayed gratification, my dad instituted in our home and on his calendar something he called “’No’ Days.” On those particular days, anything my siblings and I requested was denied. (Within reason… we still had our three square meals and every other facet of a normal day.) Our job was to respond cheerfully. It was not hard. Our parents loved us like crazy; when they said “No,” it was never vindictive and we knew it was for our own good. 

Turns out that we never understood the concept of “begging,” and to see a spoiled child screaming his head off in the grocery store was sheer trauma.

7.)       Give everything you’ve got.

Hold nothing back. “Leave nothing on the table,” as it were. If it’s worth doing, do it all the way; put all of yourself into everything you have weighed and deemed worthy of pursuit. Be all there. Do not get in the habit of being a half-hearted creature.

Because of how we were expected to work this out in other areas of life, we understood the concept of giving all of oneself, unreservedly, to something/someone. It’s pretty darn helpful in jobs, relationships, marriage. It propelled my success in search and rescue. It was the only way I knew when I gave myself to God. And I thank Him eternally for my earthly father’s wisdom.

8.)       You can always “make do” with what you have.

We rarely had the luxury of simply going out and buying the tool or ingredient we needed. It was not even an option, really. For the longest time, we didn't have a wheelbarrow, and God knows we could have used it. Find something, invent something, make it work. That was the idea.

Also, nothing ever has to be “just so.” “Only a poor runner blames his shoes.” If circumstances have to be just right and certain conditions have to be met in order to perform – in whatever area – you are handicapping yourself. Leave yourself no excuses; get in the habit of doing what “cannot” be done.

If you do not have the money, well, you spend nothing (in our earlier days, anyway). The reason so many people’s lifestyles do not match their income is because they are unwilling to live within their means—i.e., “make do.”

9.)       Learn from others’ mistakes.

It was a rare evening indeed, if my dad’s dinnertime spiel did not include an exhortation on why or why not to do as so-and-so did. Sometimes it was a news story he shared with the family. Sometimes, it was an unfortunate incident suffered by the farmer down the road.

As watchman for the family, he took it upon himself to warn us and make us aware of reality for our future survival. The big world out there was not all that up-close and personal in rural Wisconsin. Tales of another abduction of a teenage girl, someone gored by their own bull, a neighbor with health problems, or a friend’s divorce were common such topics. They never drove us to paranoia, but to think, be smart, and try to make wise decisions in life. He taught us to use the brains God gave us. Why repeat a mistake you’ve seen someone else make if you can learn from them instead?

It couldn’t make us immune, but it helped to make us more aware.

10.)   Treat people well: Listen to them, value them, put them first.

I cannot remember hearing him say anything remotely like this, but he screamed it through his actions with others. He gave his full, genuinely interested attention in conversation. He did not demand his own way or squawk for his “rights,” even when he could have. He despised that sort of thing and rose above it.

He always bought the most inexpensive thing possible, but never tried to cheat or even talk his way out of a price unless it was ridiculous. He wanted to be fair. He often gave people things he could have sold them instead. The person was more important than the price. Even with money, he treated others as he wanted to be treated.

This is the distinct notion I got from watching my dad deal with other people, including complete strangers: They, their thoughts, feelings and needs mattered more than his.

11.)   The people you love need to hear it, often.

You need to show them, and you need to verbally tell them. There is no reason to be content with just one or the other. I don’t know that my dad believed in particular love languages so much as all of them. Whether they came naturally or not was a side issue. I really think that sometimes we cripple ourselves by categorizing ourselves.

Looking at this list, one might get the notion that my dad was harsh and unfeeling with his kids. We would laugh at such a preposterous notion. The discipline never felt unfair because he was so obvious in his expressions of love. The love truly felt limitless.

Would you say something at your loved one’s funeral, from the heart, that they were unaware you felt for them while they were here on this earth? Tell them. 

Also, “Love” is spelled T-I-M-E, not M-O-N-E-Y. Especially as a father. We rarely had the one. We always had the other.