Waves

We're several days into the new year... I'm a little behind... but I'm finally ready to make my new year's resolution.  I LOVE new beginnings, fresh starts, clean slates, and all that jazz.  One thing I loved about teaching and being a student is that we kinda used to get two "new year's" every year.  Every semester, we got to come back-- well-rested and ambitious-- with the long list of things we were going to swear to start doing consistently and the other list of things we promised we'd never do again.  It's exciting to take time to reflect on your past and basically dump all the baggage that we feel was weighing us down by the end of the year.  And it's weird that we feel like we need a random calendar date to tell us when it's appropriate to dump that burdensome baggage, but we all do it-- whether it's the beginning of a school semester, or on your birthday, or even just the next upcoming Monday--  we all use these arbitrary measures of time to free ourselves of old mistakes and bad habits, and give ourselves a chance to start anew-- and January 1st is viewed as the epitome of that opportunity for renewal.

So needless to say, I was more than a little disappointed when I realized I had to "give up" on New Year's and new year's resolutions.   It was actually a rather depressing moment that felt very similar to when I found out that the tooth fairy was just my mom, and that WWF wrestling is all staged (little known fact: when I was younger, I used to be obsessed with Hulk Hogan, and my brother and I used to slap our elbows and jump off the couch sideways pretending we were wrestlers jumping off the ropes... but I digress).  The point being, when I made the decision to give up "resolutions", it was a similar disappointing revelation: that as excited as I get about new years' resolutions, they've actually never worked for me.  I can't tell you of a single year that I have accomplished something as a a result of a January 1st resolution.  In fact, I'd say that by April or May, I couldn't even tell you what the resolution was, much less there being any semblance of actual follow-through.  Soooo I'm trying something new. Inspired by Shauna Niequist, an incredible author who came to speak at my church in Houston around lent season of 2009, I've taken up the practice of New Year's Themes.  During her visit, Shauna shared that she gave up Fear for lent.  That's right-- she gave up fear-- not chocolate, or television, or cursing, but the whole concept of fear and all of the limitations that it encompasses.  I was so moved; I let that idea sit on my heart and I wrestled with it from time to time throughout the rest of the year until I decided to take it on as my own theme for the year of 2010.   So last year was my first attempt at NYT's, and now I'm a huge fan.  There's still that excitement of new beginnings and starting over, but with less pressure of finding perfection at a specific task, and more attention to gently refining who I am, how I think, and how I engage in this life.

I still have my list of to-do's, and goals, and good habits that I hope to achieve for the year, and I'll share those as well in a future post, but I've also narrowed in on the theme that I plan to focus on as I journey through this year. For you IB fans, perhaps I could describe this as the "lens" through which I hope to view 2011.  I was sifting through my old notebooks, and I was once again inspired by the words of Shauna Niequist, which led me to my theme for this year which is: Drifting.

The following is the paraphrase of one of her talks at Ecclesia.  Forgive me for butchering her actual words, but I was scribbling furiously in my notebook, trying to capture the essence of her message:  

"When going through wilderness and change, and when our life does not follow the fairytale we had planned, we should ride it like a wave.  Our tendency is to lock our knees and try to resist the waves.  As a result we get slapped around, knocked over, and washed up on the shore gasping for air.  But if we can let go and try to float, God will take us to somewhere new.  Letting go doesn't mean just letting the wave wash over us until it's over, but it means giving into the power of the wave, and going with it.  Live in it, accept it, and be transformed by it.  Change is good-- in the way that childbirth, heartbreak, and failure is good-- it's extremely painful, especially when you try to fight it, but it opens us up, and we can learn from it..."

This is the perfect image of where I've been these past 5 months.  I'm in a season of wilderness and change, and all I've done is buckled my knees, trying to resist the changes-- and sure enough, I feel tattered, worn out, and exhausted... thrown onto the shore, spitting up sand, waiting to be swept out to sea again and dragged under the next wave.  But now I'm trying a new approach: drifting-- giving in to the power of the wave, trusting in the perfect plan of God my Father.  I want to stop insisting on my plans, and being disappointed when things don't work out accordingly, and instead lay on my back, close my eyes, and float.  And I don't want to just float along the coastline where I can easily swim to shore when I get tired or scared; I want to be carried so far out to sea that I can't see anything but water in any direction, and I have no idea where I am or where I'm going-- because that's when my faith is strengthened.   And when the time is right, I want to drift onto a new shore, a new person, having been transformed by my journey, and more importantly, fully confident that I am in the exact spot, doing the exact thing that God has planned for me because it was his will being done, not my own.


Don't get me wrong-- drifting should not be confused with laziness or lack of ambition or even passivity.  Have you tried floating recently?  It's actually much harder than I remember it being as a child.  If you don't do it just right, you'll start to sink below the surface of the water and you can't breathe freely anymore.  In order to stay afloat, you actually have to arch your back, tilt your chin towards the sky, keep your head leaning backwards-- if you try to look up and see where you are, you upset the balance and your legs start to go under, and there's a way to hold your arms to change your center of buoyancy, etc., etc.  What appears to be a simple and effortless task, actually involves a great deal of energy and focus for proper execution.  And that's just to stay afloat in still waters like a pool; imagine what it takes to float when you're out at sea folding in and out of the waves.  Likewise, I anticipate that this commitment to "drifting" will require similar discipline and diligence.  Every day, at every moment, for every situation, I have to make the decision to live by faith, and "lean not on my own understanding."

There's a haziness sitting over my future right now, and I'm going through lots of change and turmoil, but this year I'm choosing to not be anxious about it and not fight against it.  As the doubt and uncertainty creeps in about what I'll do after this dance program finishes... and what city/state/country I should move to... and how will I support myself financially... and what I ultimately want to do with my life... my natural tendency is to calling me to be overwhelmed, to start gripping for control, or to just give up and take the easy path, but my spirit is telling me: "Be still, and know that I am God."  So this year, I'm choosing to ignore the societal pressures that insist that I have a plan, and a backup plan, and an action plan, and 5-year plan.  I'm choosing to stop fighting against the difficulties that I'm facing in New York City, and instead embrace them and try to learn what God is revealing to me about myself and how he's trying to transform me.  This year, I'm choosing to drift.  Wish me luck!

 P.S. If you've never read Shauna Niequist's books, please go buy them now, and be inspired!  She'll change your life.  Cold Tangerines and Bittersweet-- enjoy!