make your bed, text a prayer, love the day

Committing to life changes feels so daunting. Where should I start? 

It's mentally, emotionally paralyzing to try to answer that question. 

For what it's worth, it helps me to think of the smallest possible change I could make until I figure out the bigger changes. 

Lord, I don't know what big changes to make just yet, but surely I could make a small change -- help me take a tiny step in that direction.

But sometimes, the most minute, minuscule of changes causes giant improvements.

The littlest rock, once removed from your shoe, will remarkably improve how you walk.

The tiniest smudge, once wiped from your glasses, remarkably improves your ability to see.

Sending a text you've put off sending will do wonders to improve how you feel about yourself and your productivity.

Moving your phone away from where you sleep  will remarkably improve how rested you feel when you wake up.

For me, I always feel like I could pray more. 

 

ALWAYS. 

 

Yet a friend of mine recently commented that when people asked Jesus about how to pray, Jesus gave them the Lord's Prayer. Which ... is not a long prayer. Jesus also talked to them about the uselessness of heaping empty words into a prayer. 

 

A longer prayer doesn't automatically mean a more valuable prayer.

So maybe short prayers are the point. Like text messages. When you text with close friends, you rarely send a verbose, gotta-scroll-down-a-few-times-to-read-it-all text. 

 

It's short statements. 

 

It's incomplete sentences.

So talk like that with God. Doing a short prayer beats doing no prayer. 

 

And it's a minuscule change to the routine. I could pray while brushing my teeth. Or pray while walking to my car, or stepping into a meeting. Or when I put shoes on, or take them off. Whenever and whatever keeps the dialogue going.

Anyway, adjusting the slightest little routine can alter the course for an entire day. Or week. Or month.

Or life.

I've done an experiment lately: I make my bed just after I wake up. Before I pour myself some coffee, I make the bed.

If only it was like this

And then: whenever I make or look at my to-do list for the day, I always write 'make bed.' And I strike a triumphant line through it to signal its completion. 

 

Just helps set a tone for the day, I'm told.

Commit to some incremental adjustment. It often precludes huge strides forward.

We all have giant, gargantuan dream lists of what we'd like to see be different in our life. To lose weight. Renew our faith life with God. Smile more when we meet people. Stop snacking after midnight. Talk back to our anxiety to let it know who's boss. Pursue the dream. Stop obsessing over perfection. Talk to the crush. 

It all seems so out of reach. Where to start?

Start by making your bed. Start with a short prayer. 

Also, what other little step(s) can you take?

where we belong

What becomes home? 

One of my favorite lyrics from any Bob Dylan song comes in 'Mississippi', a tune he wrote later in his career (Sheryl Crow also did a great cover). The song shambles and shuffles along, jammed full of evocative imagery. But then it drops this line: "You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way"

I love that lyric. Profound brevity. It captures an entire truth in 13 words.

The entire truth is this: some eras and places in life get so intertwined into us -- who we were when we were there, and whenever we resided there -- that when we leave, it's as though a bell rings and something changes, never to change back.

And of course, no one can unring a bell. 

What we call 'home' will change. 

Pragmatically speaking, I can still walk the halls of my high school. But of course, it wouldn't be the same as when I -- as a teen -- hustled from my locker to class, or to lunch, or to the bus. It was a home for me then, but that time is long time gone. I can always come back, but I can't come back all the way.

Where becomes home? We feel at home sometimes in life, uprooted during other times. If we stand in any place for enough time, we can't help but allow home roots to creep into the soil beneath us. We instinctively want to make a home out of wherever we are.

Depending on who, how, and where we were before college, college can quickly feel like a home -- where we can be ourselves (or a prototype of us), a foretaste of what's ahead. We find places. We live eras. We bond with people who love us as we are, even when we don't know who we are. We catch glimpses of what adulting can bring.

While senior year usually marks the peak high school experience, I'm convinced the college peak version of this is the junior undergrad year.

College senior year feels something like a concert encore: it's beautiful and often fun, and a joy. But everyone's also reaching for their car keys, thinking about getting out of the venue, and what's next. The show's almost over. 

By senior year, people get reasonably distracted by the array and approaching deadlines of possible next steps: graduation, looking for a job, figuring out a relationship, graduate school, year of service, marriage, now what?, maybe moving to a new city. It's not to say senior year can't be marvelous. It certainly can be! It just takes a lot of time to live in the moment. The senior year seldom affords that kind of time. But junior year -- that's a sweeter spot.

So to those who aren't sure where home is since coming to college, that's not just you. Home can be hard to find, and that's normal. The feeling of exile spreads through more human hearts than we might think. College tastes like that bizarre appetizer of some what comes next. Parts of the appetizer will make you believe you've arrived home. You may not be home, but you could be stealing glances of your future. How invigorating!

Home can be where you're from. It can also be more than that. It's a refreshingly elastic term. You don't always need the clear sense of where home is. Sometimes home finds you.

Your hometown could be called a home (if that's what you want). Yet while you're in college, going back to that place will feel like you somehow can't go back all the way. It'll be missing people and the faces of your peers. Something's different.

Can't unring the bell.

"So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight." -2 Corinthians 5:6-7

Songs About Home 

divine discontent

"Being single is a gift from God." 

Oh, this phrase pissed me off whenever I heard it. 

If this is true (a point I won't entirely concede): as a college student and then as a young adult, I reacted to this axiom as a young kid might react to receiving clothes as a birthday present: technically useful, and yes, technically a gift.

But let's be honest: Not all "gifts" elicit the same joyful gratitude, for good reason. 

When and where this gift of singleness can become tiresome:

-When the slow songs start at the formals, the dances, the weddings. That's when some of you head for the bathroom (or outside, or to the bar, or anywhere else but on the dance floor).

-Walking on campus or down a sidewalk ... seeing couples walking together, holding hands, or happily chatting with one another.

-Nights and weekends. Somehow, any loneliness experienced during these times distinctly agitated my heart and inner monologue.

-Holidays. Especially holidays that involve seeing family and loved ones. Arbor Day is probably OK though (unless you're crushing on a horticulturist).

-National Boyfriend/Girlfriend Day on social media.

-Third-wheeling it with the friend who seems to always be dating someone, or is in a situationship that's looking solid.

-Engagement parties for friends.

-Valentine's Day. Enough said.

-Hearing about someone's situationship, and wondering when (or if) someone will ask you out. 

To be fair, I did not acutely feel this ache of singleness all the time, every day.

Some weeks and months felt easier.

Other weeks and months felt harder.

Different people will offer different perspectives on this, many no doubt wiser than mine. So please take my words alongside those of others in your life whom you trust.

As a young person who didn't always enjoy being single, what did it often feel like?

It felt like I had more capability as a person than I could show. Wanting an opportunity. It was as though I knew I could run faster than what my shoes could sustain, if only given a chance. A divine discontent stuck with me -- sometimes quieter, sometimes louder.

I say 'divine' discontent because it felt like my discontent was part of how God created me. I wanted what I felt built to do -- to love someone with my whole heart.

To be all in.

To be known fully and fully loved, anyway. 

To have inside jokes and quirky backstories.

To be my actual weird self, and have someone say 'Yep -- that's what I'm looking for.'

Waiting, praying, and hoping for that slowly got easier (emphasis on s l o w l y). 

 

In the meantime, my unofficial mindset became: "I might as well keep busy, have fun, learn new stuff, stay grounded in my faith, and do meaningful work while I hope and pray for this."

 

If I met my future wife along the way? Splendid. If I met a bunch of cool people who brought much joy to my life by their presence and antics? Also splendid.

Being single included bountiful amounts of joy. Friends, trips, experiences, concerts, relationships, learning, laughing. My joy co-existed alongside this divine discontent of wanting. The waiting commingled hope and exasperation to varying degrees -- wondering when, how, and who.

Life was good, and I hoped for more. Both of these facts stayed true.

Is it possible to be single & happy? 

 

Absolutely! Our lives teem with examples around us every day that shout this truth.

 

The happiness will surge, and will fall back, like the tide. So take wholesome advantage of when you can contentedly build a sandcastle or dig for seashells. Eventually, the tide will surge again, and wash it out.

 

 

It can stink to watch the tide take away your sandcastle. There's no getting around that. 

 

And yet ... there'll be more chances to build new castles, find new seashells, and to see another shoreline sunset and sunrise.

 

 

 

Useful Reading:

Boundaries in Dating by Cloud & Townsend (Link here)