YOKE

1 a : a wooden bar or frame by which two draft animals (as oxen) are joined at the heads or necks for working together

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” -Matthew 11:28-30, New International Version

Thanks to chapter 11 of Matthew, I've been pondering what it means to be yoked for the last five days or so. When I read through the passage, I was using the lectio divina method of reading scripture, so I read it through several times and then tried to picture myself talking to Jesus about it.  In my mind's eye, I saw Jesus guide me into a room both welcoming and beautiful.  Once there, I settled in on a sofa with a blanket tucked around me.  When I thought about the word "yoke" I felt clearly that what this word meant for me was "write."  This might seem contradictory since I have been doing many things - none of them writing - over the course of the last three weeks.

It's not that I haven't thought about writing - I have.  But most of my ideas lately have been of the fiction variety.  And who has time, energy (and talent) enough to tackle that?  Not me.  So I've been mentally filing away the writing ideas and instead pouring my time and energy into planning for our next school year.  While that may seem a long way away, the knowledge that I will be homeschooling all three girls again next year has propelled me to move from dreaming about an idea to actively pursuing it.  Starting in August we will have our very own neighborhood tutorial offering science, literature/debate and possibly a math enrichment option.  Since January, I have been working steadily to find tutors, work out the timing and get everything arranged.  Sunday night I took the somewhat scary step of presenting the plan to other families via e-mail.  Nearly all of them want to join us on this adventure.  I am pleased, excited and a little terrified.

I've been dreaming of doing something like this since my first year of homeschooling, but I've also been waiting for the right time.  Last fall, I accepted a job at my church overseeing the elementary Sunday school classes and volunteers.  Just recently, I agreed to expand that role to the preschool classrooms as well.  I've been treading carefully through all of this, taking it one month at a time.  But I have prayed for guidance at each step and I've honestly found the work quite easy.  A few months into the job at St. B's, it occurred to me that it might help prepare me for starting a tutorial.  Many of the skills I use for that role, including communication, volunteer management, setting clear expectations and supporting the people in the classrooms, could help me set up a homeschool tutorial.

How does all of this relate to being yoked?  I see it as being about my yoke because there have been times in my life when I've strained against my yoke, pushing ahead and pulling God along behind me.  There have also been times when God has had to encourage me to take a step instead of staying rooted to the spot.  But these jobs have felt like a natural outflowing of who I am and what I do well.  While I wouldn't say I have exactly felt like I am working alongside God (I haven't felt enough closeness to him to describe it that way), I can say that when I look back I feel like I have been gently led to where I am standing - and there has been very little need for pushing or prodding.

The hardest part of being yoked isn't being asked to work - I am finding that if I wait for God to show me the jobs that are meant for me, they are rarely hard.  He knows my strengths much better than I know them myself.  All three of the current things that occupy my time and energy - homeschooling, coordinating at St. B's and setting up the tutorial - require skills and interests that I have (in abundance).  So doing them isn't the hard part.  The hard part is believing that I've made the right decisions and having confidence that I can do these things.  So I'm trying to remember that I don't have to do all of this on my own.  That's where it's helpful to see myself as yoked - I'm only doing part of the work.  The Message version of Matthew 11:28-30 says it this way,

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. -Matthew 11:28-30, The Message 

When I hear the word "yoked," I may worry about being asked to do things I can't do or being pulled along to a place I'm not ready to go.  But these words paint a different picture.  Live freely and lightly?  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace?  Yes, please.  And I can see this in my life.  The work I am doing feels unforced.  That makes me desire even more to walk with Jesus and watch how he goes about his work, in the hopes that I can do mine in a way that likewise blesses other people.

PERCEPTION

1 a : a result of perceiving : observation

Three seemingly small and insignificant things happened yesterday at church: someone stopped me in the hall to say she's been enjoying my blog, another told my husband they appreciate my "calm presence" and when I complimented a friend on her cute outfit, she told me I inspired her to wear it.  Each of these things could have easily gone unnoticed.  But they didn't.  Why?  I think because I was listening with my heart as well as my ears. 

Do you do this?  Ear listening is the kind where I hear what the person is saying, respond and walk away, never to think of it again.  Heart listening is like an echo of the conversation that replays in my mind.  It's sort of like a quiet voice whispering, "Did you hear that? She reads your blog."  If I let it, the echo shows me what's important.  There's a reason I needed to hear each of these things - and not just hear them, but hear them with my heart.

The message for me in each of these interactions is that I am being seen and that my offerings have value.  I have a love/hate relationship with being seen.  Since you can't truly be known without being seen, I value authenticity and having someone "get me." I also fear being seen because one of the lessons I learned in childhood is that being seen can bring pain and shame.  I'm not sure whether this paradox of wanting to be seen and wanting to blend in is one I will have to live with for the rest of my life, but I do think God is calling my attention to it and trying to gently show me that people DO see me, whether I know it, like it or fear it.  In fact, I think that's what this whole year of radiance has been about. 

For the last three years, I've asked God for a word for the year.  In the late fall, I start praying and asking God what my word for the next year should be.  2010 was change, 2011 was unfurl, 2012 is radiant.  Radiant has been the hardest word for me.  Change I was able to embrace, because God had really been preparing my heart for that one for a long time.  Unfurl was also a bit scary - the idea of letting the real me fly about in the breeze was unsettling.  But radiant?  Yikes.  What am I to do with that?  Apparently, it's not something for me to do.  Because while the first two words are verbs, radiant is an adjective.  I don't think it's something I'm supposed to do (it's not radiATE), it's something I am.  That scares me more than just a little.  But when I can set aside my fear and listen and observe, I see God trying to gently remind me who I am. 

I chose the word "perception" for this post because I was thinking about how each of these three women at church helped me change my perception of myself.  But the definition made me realize a whole other side to this: that my job is to watch for God - to look for him at work, to listen to the echoes in my heart, to observe and perceive.  Not to make myself radiant, but to see who I already am.

As you read this, I don't know whether to encourage you to help others see who they are or encourage you to cultivate heart listening.  I doubt the interactions yesterday felt important to the people who offered me these gifts - it was the receiving that made them gifts.  But we never know what our words will do in someone's heart, so we should choose them wisely.  And if we are listening with our hearts as well as our ears, perhaps we'll offer words that God can use as gifts.  I want to offer my ordinary life and self to God and have his perception change them into extraordinary things.

TRYING

1 : making an attempt
2 : severely straining the powers of endurance

Last Sunday, our rector started a series on the book of James.  As a part of his introduction, he talked about what a challenging book of the Bible James is.  He referenced Martin Luther's desire to have it excluded from canon, so challenging (and contradictory?) did he find it.  Yet my priest believes James is largely about living as though the kingdom of God is present here and now.  I'm interested to hear more about this and found the timing of it interesting, since I had only the day before thrown into the recycling pile my notes from an inductive study of James several years prior.  I dug contents of the former James binder out of the recycling box and today I got around to reading some of my thoughts and learnings from my previous encounter with this book.

I flipped through the pages today while soaking in the bathtub and by the time I'd read a few weeks' worth of thoughts, I was struck by one thing: how hard I was trying.  I read my words and while some of them were and are true, they are also the words of someone who is making an attempt to do more, be better, force change.  They are the words of someone whose faith was head based, not heart centered.

It made me sad for that Shannon to read how harsh I was with myself  and how desperately I wanted to conform to someone else's image of a Godly woman.  Many of the things I said about myself don't even sound true to me now.  Where they then?  Maybe.  Maybe I have changed and grown. But I also suspect that part of why they don't ring true now is because I have typically defined myself relative to those around me - that's one danger of being so aware of what others project with their feelings.  And the environment I was in was one where conformity was encouraged, sin should be seen and rooted out and there was one right answer.  I always struggled with the "one right answer" portion and I now believe that sin is not so much something for me to identify and remove as something that I have to wait for God to reveal to me.  My deepest sins are so much a part of the way I think that I often don't see them as sin - and they wouldn't even be sin for someone else.

As I lay there in the bathtub this afternoon, I gained less insight into the book of James than into my own heart.  Reading those reflections and principles made me see that I am a different person now than I was five years ago.  You may recall that my word for this year is radiant.  I've seldom written about it, so difficult have I found this word to absorb.  For most of this year, I've imagined radiant as a command - something that God wants me to become.  But today I felt a whisper that radiant is not a command, but a truth that I have been blind to.  God thinks I am already radiant.  All that is left is for me to see it and accept it.  Which is, of course, easier said than done.  No amount of trying will get me there.  Seeing myself for who I am is not a matter of working my way to it.  It's far more like letting go of all that I am trying to do and be and seeing what's left when I am left with essence.

You may have noticed at the start of this blog that I included two very different definitions for the word trying.  That Shannon of the James Inductive Study was trying to be someone new.  The Shannon of today is walking through some trying times.  It's not easy to pack a home up, even under ideal circumstances.  Doing so while homeschooling three and with a stress fracture is certainly straining my powers of endurance.  Yet I hope that while activity swirls around me and to-do lists swirl in my mind, I can find a small, quiet place in my mind to go and just be with God.  Not to try to learn or do anything, but to rest and remember who I am.

RE-

(prefix)
1 : again : anew

Is it hard to start something for the first time?  Or is it harder to pick it back up again when you have a skill, a talent, an interest that you've let atrophy?  Three things have prompted this line of thinking:  having a newly functioning kitchen, exercising again in earnest for the first time since my January surgery, and experiencing the loss of community that came with a switch in churches.

Who knew a new kitchen would actually bring on a touch of cooking anxiety?  The first meal I made in our new kitchen wasn't terribly elaborate:  tomato tart, zucchini patties and a fruit trifle.  The primary emotion I felt when the meal came together just fine and tasted delicious?  Relief.  I didn't realize until relief surged through my body that I had been afraid I had forgotten how to cook.  This may sound ridiculous, but when I stopped to think about it, it had been many months since I'd been able to regularly cook. 

The New Kitchen's Inaugural Meal

The kitchen renovation kept me from cooking for four to six weeks - no surprise there.  But prior to that, my surgery in January had completely halted all cooking from me for a similar span of time.  Between the surgery and the renovation lay a lovely experiment:  food swap with three other families, which resulted in me cooking only once per week, albeit for four families.  So it had been approximately six months since I last cooked everyday meals for my family.  No wonder I was relieved to still have some culinary skill.

A graph of my work outs would have a similar gap.  Prior to my surgery in January, I worked out fairly regularly (2-3 times weekly) if not strenuously (yoga and walking were regular components).  Post surgery, it was several weeks before I could walk without assistance, much less exercise.  My surgeon, while skilled in her field, did not give me a good indication of just how long it would take for me to resume normal activity after having three tendons cut.  For a long time, when I tried to work out, it was simply discouraging.  My leg would hurt after each work out - and not in a good, achy, post-workout way - it was more of a searing pain, ice this now kind of way. 

So I stopped trying for a while.  Then, a few weeks ago, I realized how envious I was of the various people I see walking, jogging and running along our neighborhood sidewalks.  If my desire to work out had returned, it was worth giving it a try.  For the month of July, I've been moderately consistent and while I have a long way to go, the desire is there.  But it's hard to admit I now get tired after three minutes of running, instead of a mile of it.

No way am I posting a picture of me running

I would estimate we're in about mile 2 or 3 of the marathon task of finding a new church home.  Summer being what it is, we're in just about the same place we were in May, when J said, "We've determined that we like the Sunday morning experience.  Now we need to find out whether there are people we could actually be friends with."  We've been in this place before.  When A was born ten years ago, I would say we had very few true friends.  We hung out with co-workers quite a bit and saw a few friends from college days, but all in all those were pretty lonely days.  No one brought us meals to celebrate her birth.  Almost none of our friends had children, so there was nowhere to turn for advice. 

Carrying it all alone

 The difference between then and now is that now we know what we are missing.  I know that I'm lonely and miss the friendships - both close and casual - that I had at our old church.  I don't think this loss is without purpose because I continue to feel peace in our decision and I feel that God is working behind the scenes to use my sense of being alone for a purpose he knows.  But that doesn't make it easy.  It doesn't make it easier to once again engage with a group of people we know nothing about.  It doesn't make it easy to make small talk with strangers at an event (not my strong suit).  It doesn't make it possible for me to have enough inner dialogue to think through an issue in my own head like I could by talking it out with a friend.

Naming 2010 the year of change has been more apt than I knew back in January.  Change apparently brings not only new things, but old things in a new way.  In some ways, reestablishing my culinary skills, relearning to pace myself on a run and returning to a lack of community should be reassuring.  I've been here before and can relearn what I need to.  But sometimes I just want life to be easier than it is.

NEXT

1 : in the time, place, or order nearest or immediately succeeding
After a full year of having a speaking commitment looming ahead of me, it is done, finished. I find I am grateful to have had the opportunity to share some of what God has taught me - and to see very clearly some fruit from seeds planted during a long and hard recovery. (To download Friday's presentation, click here. Saturday's is here.) Sometimes we walk through hard things and never get to know and understand their purpose in our lives, so it was an honor to see my own struggles help other women.

What comes next? It's not that I don't know where to spend my time. I have plenty of things that need doing - a kitchen remodel to plan, a home school curriculum to design, and, always, laundry to be done. So I know what to do with my hands, my body and, to some extent, my mind. But where should my focus go?

I haven't spent the last year in constant preparation for the retreat. I've spent time studying other things, reading other books, tackling other tasks. But this commitment was such a large one that it's always been there and a part of my mind has been tuned in and waiting for something of clarity to come through to direct me in what to say. Even in the waiting, I had great peace throughout this process. I could easily have been a basket case - or a control freak - leading up to the retreat. But I received affirmations along the way and a supernatural calm.

Will that peace, that stillness, that calm evaporate when I move on to whatever is next? Will I feel as close to God when walking a less terrifying path of obedience?

And then I realize that maybe what's next is just as terrifying.

Which is scarier - speaking in front of 80 women or leaving the only church home I've ever really known in faith that God has another place for my family?

I guess I'm almost exactly where I was a year ago - about to do something that I'm not sure I can do, something that I feel very clearly on my heart. At least this year, I have the comfort of looking back on God's faithful provision so far and can rely on the fact that whatever is next, I won't be tackling it alone.