Who. Not what.

For most of my life I have known that God has a plan for my life.  This fact should be very reassuring and encouraging, but for many years, knowing that God has a plan for my life has filled me with anxiety and has left me in fear of not following God’s plan for my life.

I believed that God has one very specific and exact plan for the way I am supposed to live my life.  I imagined that God had laid out my life and I needed to essentially read God’s mind in order to figure out what to say, what to think, where to go, where to stay, and what to wear so that I would please God and live the life God wanted me to live.  I thought making one wrong choice, one mis-step, one incorrect action would forever alter my life in a way that would never allow me to get back on the “right” path that God had intended me to walk down.

And it was never the worry of making bad choices that gave me such anxiety.  I’ve never been one to consider recklessly breaking laws, repeatedly partying hard through the night and ditching class in the morning, or doing other such things that would detrimentally affect my life.  The decisions that filled me with anxiety were decisions between doing two or more good things.  Decisions like: should I join the Peace Corps or should I go to graduate school to study social justice?  Or should I apply to work at Non-profit Organization A or Christian Organization B? 

I often felt paralyzed and unable to make any decision because I was so afraid of making the wrong decision. 

To some extent I’ve wanted to hold on to the belief that God has one specific plan for my life: a second-by-second plan to living the life God intended for Melissa.  If I could just figure out a way to read God’s mind and know what that second by second plan is, life would be so easy…

But I’ve come to understand that God’s plan for my life is more about WHO God wants me to be and less about WHAT God wants me to do.  If I am the person God wants me to be then I will naturally do the things God wants me to do.

God wants me to be a person who loves and serves God and likewise loves and serves other people.  God wants me to be a person who seeks justice and leads other people to act in ways that bring about justice in this world.  And God wants me to be a person who has hope and spreads that hope that one day the Kingdom of God will be fully present on earth.

Perhaps it is the case that God has a detailed plan laid out for my life.  I’m not opposed to this idea, but I’ve found such freedom in relinquishing the idea that I need to figure out and follow some unknown to me second-by-second and step-by-step plan.

So for now my plan is to trust and be. I’m going to trust that God has a plan for my life and try to be the person I think God wants me to be.

Doing Spring Things in February

Last week I wrote about my love of snow and how glad I was to finally get some decent snow.  I’m still holding out for another couple of feet of snow this year, but this weekend I started getting ready for SPRING!

Yesterday I made a trip to the library to pick up a couple of tax forms and I came home with a nice stack of books on organic gardening/farming, microgreens, growing plants from seed, composting, and urban farming.  

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening reading the books and absorbing all the information and by the time bed time came around I was so excited about planting and growing vegetables that I was ready to go outside right then and start planting things.  Of course the seeds wouldn’t do so well this this weather, so I managed to have enough patience and I spent way too much time on Pinterest looking at gardening things and I decided to start some seeds inside this afternoon.

I went out through the cold rain to the shed to dig out my seed starting supplies and then proceeded to take over the kitchen and get dirt all over the counter and under my nails.

I’ve got a whole assortment of seeds, some that I saved from veggeis over the past couple of years and some left over from last year’s seed packets. 

I mixed up some organic seed starting mix with some water and some worm tea (the liquid that gathers in the bottom of the container our composting worms live in: see my post on our worm farms for more info on our sweet worms).  

This went into the seedling tray.  Then I put 2-3 seeds in each cell.  I planted tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, jalapeno peppers, cucumber, and cantaloupe (I planted the cucumber and cantaloupe mostly to check how well those seeds will germinate, usually cucumber and cantaloupe seeds are planted right in the ground).

The greenhouse top is on and they will sit in our kitchen windowsill and hopefully soon we’ll start to see some seedlings!

Snow

It seems that people either love snow or they hate snow.  I definitely fall into the former category.  I guess I can understand the reasons why some people hate snow.  For those of you who are haters, I need to apologize to you because I’ve been praying a lot lately for snow.  Sorry.

I just don’t understand what’s not to love about snow…

It’s peaceful.  I just love sitting and watching the snow fall quietly to the ground.  I love how it blows and drifts from the sky to the ground.

It’s beautiful.  I love how light snow sits on and piles up on tree branches.  I love how the wind makes ripples in the snow.

It transforms.  When the flowers die, the grass starts to turn browner, and the leaves fall off the trees in the fall, things can be drab and even ugly.  But snow transforms nature.  It brings brightness and light to what was dark.

I got to do a little cross country skiing with my sister and my dog this afternoon.  It was glorious.  

Buddy LOVES the snow!

He found a stick to play with and had SO much fun!

Being Alive

After my second trip to El Salvador I wrote on this blog about a “something” that Salvadorans seem to have that I don’t.  While in El Salvador I feel this something and it stays with me for a while once I get home but it far too quickly dissipates.  It is this “something” that makes me feel alive, full of joy, happiness, and hope.

This “something” is something that I have thought about a lot and I have written about (on this blog and in my personal writing).  Every once in a while I have an insight about this “something” or I read a book or article that makes think about this “something” or I have a conversation with someone that helps me get closer to figuring out what that “something” is.  Yet, I still feel like I am far from understanding this “something”.  Maybe it’s a good thing that I have to keep searching for and refining an understanding of this something, but it is a little frustrating.

More and more I’m thinking that this “something” has to do with being alive.  When I say being alive I don’t just mean being alive in the sense that a person is breathing and his or her heart is beating.  No, I mean being alive in the fullest sense.

It has to do with being alive in Christ, living as Christ has asked and required us to live. 

What exactly does it mean to be alive in Christ? 

Ephesians 5:1-2 says, “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

1 John 3:16, 18 lays it out even clearer: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.  Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

To be truly alive means to live a life of sacrifice and love.  Jesus lived the perfect life of love and sacrificed everything he had for everyone who has or ever will live.  And we are supposed to follow Jesus’ example.

When I’m in El Salvador I experience this sense of being alive because I am among Salvadorans who are so much better than I am at living, at living a life of sacrifice and love.  Salvadorans are just really good at living selfless lives and loving everyone.  It’s evident in the way they go about their day to day life meeting the needs of other people when their own needs are often barely met.  It’s evident in the loving and generous way they care for complete strangers and foreigners who come to visit.  It’s evident in their stories from their experiences during the civil war in El Salvador- even in times of great tragedy and loss, so many Salvadorans continued to give up so much to work for a better world.  Salvadorans don’t just sit around and talk about the one time they made a sacrifice for someone else.  My Salvadoran friends daily live a life of sacrifice.  They love in action. 

And during the time I spend with Salvadorans, I understand what it means to be alive in the fullest sense.  I see people loving with reckless abandon.  I watch people live with hope.  I experience what it means to live with joy.  And I absorb the hope, love, and joy of the Salvadorans.    

So, then this question remains: how can I continue to feel that “something” when I’m not in El Salvador?  It has to be possible, right???

I’ve got some ideas on the answer to this question, but you’ll have to wait until next week for the answer.  

My Fallen Hero

Lance Armstrong was my hero.

I hung posters of Lance on my walls.  I read and reread the two books he wrote.  I wore a LIVESTRONG bracelet for a few years.  Lance’s love for the sport of cycling was contagious and I fell in love with cycling and still love getting on my bike.  I spent hours and hours watching the Tour de France every morning for three weeks each summer for a few years.  I watched to see Lance win and continue the story of his triumph over hardship and cancer.  And when I was looking to buy a new bike, Trek will be happy to know that my purchase of a Trek road bike was highly influenced by the fact that Lance road a Trek (and I even got a bike with the colors and decals of the Discovery Channel team he road on).

For a while, I was pretty much obsessed with Lance Armstrong.  My obsession lessened when he retired from cycling, but I still kept up with what he was up to and he still inspired me.  It broke my heart to see everyone accusing him of doping.  I believed he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t take performance enhancing substances.  Up until a few days ago there was a little part of me that held on desperately to the idea he was telling the truth.      

I think we all wanted to believe this perfect story of a man beating the odds to go on to be the best cyclist the world has seen while raising funds and awareness to put an end to cancer.

But we now know the story is not perfect.

Lance has a long way to go to fix broken relationships, to grow as a human being, and to heal, and I’ll be praying for him in his journey ahead.  I sincerely hope that the truth will set him free.  I’m not angry at Lance, I don’t want him to suffer in the aftermath of his cheating and lies, and I’m working to forgive him.  I’m just really disappointed in a man I looked up to and I’m heartbroken for his sake and for my sake that his perfect story isn’t perfect.

As I watched Lance’s interview with Oprah I found myself wondering how he got himself in such a deep mess.  How could someone who did so much good and inspired so many people have made so many wrong choices and hurt so many people?  How can someone who seemed to have it all come so quickly to the point where his life is in shambles?

There are many reasons why Lance is where he is today, but I think it all boils down to this: for Lance it was all about the bike.  He got so caught up in winning, so caught up in controlling every aspect of his life so he could be the best cyclist, so caught up in the process of trying to live the perfect story.  He came to a point where he believed he could control every aspect and outcome in his life, but in the end this led him to the point where everything fell apart. 

The scariest part is: I’m not so different from Lance.

I have the need to feel that sense of control in life, I need to know that my future is secure, and I often find myself making plans as if I can make everything for the rest of my life just perfect.  To a certain extent, I can and should control things that happen in my life, but the minute I think I have the ultimate control is the minute I start down the same road Lance was on.

If we think and act as if life is all about the bike (or all about whatever you have foolishly made the priority in your life) and if we think we can control our lives and live that perfect life through our own doing we will find we never quite get there or worse we will find ourselves on a path to devastation.

Real life is messy and far from perfect.  We can’t expect perfection and we can’t create perfection.  We can only put our trust in the fact that God has ultimate control of our lives.   We must turn over the control to God.  I find great hope that as I let God work through me through God’s plan, the story of my life is becoming better than when I tried to do it on my own.  The story may not be perfect, but it will indeed be beautiful.