Pastoring Your Heart
I'm sitting on the porch looking into his eyes - the same ones I've looked into for almost 25 years - and I'm fumbling over my words...again. Many times - most of the time - we can read each others thoughts. But he's looking at me like I'm speaking a different language and I am, I'm trying to speak my heart and it's a mess. I've listened for two days about the mission trip and I'm waiting to be asked about how my heart feels after losing the baby. I look up at the stars and I miss my oldest son, the only other "thinker" in this clan I call my family. "I feel alone." and that's about the sum of everything going on inside and it doesn't make any sense. I feel alone in a family of 8 surrounded by amazing community and people that love me. I pause and sit back and breathe - the kind of breathing you do when you're about to see a baby exit your body. It helps and I decide sleep will help more than more words that clearly aren't making any sense.
This past year has been a season of loss and I'm just tired. Losing a child, another off to college, daring to dream dreams lost, very little time alone, friends leaving, etc. If you're around me enough you'll hear me use the term "Man up!" and I tell myself this alllll the time. I believe it too - our culture is too weak and self focused. But what can be maddening about me is that I can go for very long stretches of hard and not bow under the weight and then low and behold I bend. It's like living with a schizo, really. But this is real life in relationship.
Trying to communicate is the hardest part of any two people wanting to create life together. And I'd like to say that it's easier to do with others than it is with your spouse or your children. More so with your spouse because you might as well go around with a T-shirt that says "I have expectations of you...a LOT of them." And expectations are a recipe for disaster. Add onto that people who are pastoral and you've got a perfect storm for conflict. Because when you pastor people you often don't pastor those closest to you - it's too hard because you're a part of "the problem" and that's vulnerable. The way that you care for the ones dear to you looks more like creating memories and moments and taking care of physical needs. But venturing into the land of hearts is terrifying and bricks are gathered and mortar mixed and walls begin to form. And you feel alone.
For us it's finding the uninterrupted time to "go there" and stay there long enough to see the eucharist of the hard offered. Love takes time. Kids everywhere, people everywhere, a miscarriage everywhere, a mission trip everywhere, duties everywhere, commitments everywhere, work everywhere, reaching out to neighbors everywhere...and you're alone. It's funny how when you stop you find that there are some strong feelings going on somewhere deep inside. Oversights, misunderstandings - they grow slow. And it is confusing because feelings aren't always on the back end of the event like a car door closing when pushed, sometimes feelings are like the little cabbage I found in my garden that I had forgotten I planted as a seed last fall...just now poking through to be noticed. Just like love, your heart takes time.
When we were younger we would make excuses for almost everything hard. I myself was a professional "excuser", but as I got older I realized everyone could see through any given excuse and I also gained the courage to say "That's not a priority for me right now." When something matters to you you find time, especially for your heart and it isn't impossible it's just that it requires the other person to find the time too.
Because I've lived a lot of the dreams he wants to live when I was a kid and he's seen how flat some of my dreams can end - his dreams make me want to shut down, run off and become a nun and my dreams feel stifling and often non-Kingodm to him. But we will find the Eucharist. We always do. When you love someone you take the time to commune with Jesus ~ like the unity of the Trinity.
He brought me coffee this morning and I looked into his eyes and I saw my heart ~ I don't think he sees it yet, but it's in there just like his is in mine. We'll find each other because the Eucharist has become too sweet and too necessary to watch it slip between our fingers.
For now I'm off to clean up the 8 nectarines my 1yo has eaten while I've typed. ;) Find time for your heart ~ it matters.
This past year has been a season of loss and I'm just tired. Losing a child, another off to college, daring to dream dreams lost, very little time alone, friends leaving, etc. If you're around me enough you'll hear me use the term "Man up!" and I tell myself this alllll the time. I believe it too - our culture is too weak and self focused. But what can be maddening about me is that I can go for very long stretches of hard and not bow under the weight and then low and behold I bend. It's like living with a schizo, really. But this is real life in relationship.
Trying to communicate is the hardest part of any two people wanting to create life together. And I'd like to say that it's easier to do with others than it is with your spouse or your children. More so with your spouse because you might as well go around with a T-shirt that says "I have expectations of you...a LOT of them." And expectations are a recipe for disaster. Add onto that people who are pastoral and you've got a perfect storm for conflict. Because when you pastor people you often don't pastor those closest to you - it's too hard because you're a part of "the problem" and that's vulnerable. The way that you care for the ones dear to you looks more like creating memories and moments and taking care of physical needs. But venturing into the land of hearts is terrifying and bricks are gathered and mortar mixed and walls begin to form. And you feel alone.
For us it's finding the uninterrupted time to "go there" and stay there long enough to see the eucharist of the hard offered. Love takes time. Kids everywhere, people everywhere, a miscarriage everywhere, a mission trip everywhere, duties everywhere, commitments everywhere, work everywhere, reaching out to neighbors everywhere...and you're alone. It's funny how when you stop you find that there are some strong feelings going on somewhere deep inside. Oversights, misunderstandings - they grow slow. And it is confusing because feelings aren't always on the back end of the event like a car door closing when pushed, sometimes feelings are like the little cabbage I found in my garden that I had forgotten I planted as a seed last fall...just now poking through to be noticed. Just like love, your heart takes time.
When we were younger we would make excuses for almost everything hard. I myself was a professional "excuser", but as I got older I realized everyone could see through any given excuse and I also gained the courage to say "That's not a priority for me right now." When something matters to you you find time, especially for your heart and it isn't impossible it's just that it requires the other person to find the time too.
Because I've lived a lot of the dreams he wants to live when I was a kid and he's seen how flat some of my dreams can end - his dreams make me want to shut down, run off and become a nun and my dreams feel stifling and often non-Kingodm to him. But we will find the Eucharist. We always do. When you love someone you take the time to commune with Jesus ~ like the unity of the Trinity.
He brought me coffee this morning and I looked into his eyes and I saw my heart ~ I don't think he sees it yet, but it's in there just like his is in mine. We'll find each other because the Eucharist has become too sweet and too necessary to watch it slip between our fingers.
For now I'm off to clean up the 8 nectarines my 1yo has eaten while I've typed. ;) Find time for your heart ~ it matters.
Marching and praying.
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