the blessed annoyance of unlearning

"Come snow skiing with us," they said. "It'll be a fun day," they said.

Nope.

That was not a fun day.

I didn't have coordination trouble. Nor did I have problems getting onto the ski lifts. I also figured out how to stop (ie just fall down). 

No, my trouble was deeper. I had to unlearn. 

The stingiest hurdle for me that day was my skiing experiences ... but not snow skiing. Water skiing.

They're both skiing. This is true. And they are similar enough for me to believe my water skiing experience would help. But ... it actually did not help. It hindered. It wasn't just learning how to snow ski -- I also had to unlearn and work against my water skiing habits and reflexes. Unlearning took effort.

This memory comes to my mind now and then, especially in the wintertime. 

At times, I tend to believe that improvement in life -- growing in my faith, or changing how I relate to others, or more regularly giving thanks -- can be achieved by acquiring more knowledge, by growing in wisdom and skill.

But that's only part of it. 

We also gotta unlearn. Sometimes, we gotta unlearn more than we would want. 

Un-learning. 

Unlearning habits that no longer work. 

Unlearning coping strategies.

Unlearning unwise ways to relate. 

Unlearning our sneaky pride.* 

[*Specifically, unlearning a pride that convinces us that we know what's best for ourselves, and unless we get exactly what we think should happen, everything all ruined. That's a sneaky kind of pride that feeds anxiety, when we assume we know the best ways that everything should happen and work out.]

Unlearning lies we came to believe were truth. 

Unlearning behaviors. 

It's a continual shedding of those barnacles that cling to us.

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road ... Going back is the quickest way on.” -CS Lewis

Unlearning can 'feel' like you're losing ground. It can 'feel' like you're falling behind. It can stink to realize that you have anything to unlearn. 

It's rarely 'feels' efficient to unlearn. But we all have stuff to unlearn. Small stuff. Bigger stuff. Welcome to the party.

It's wise to figure out where you took a wrong turn. We all make wrong turns, sometimes even for (at the time were) understandable reasons. Sometimes we took a wrong turn because we were trying the best we could, with the knowledge we had to work with at the time. 

Make the turn. Do the unlearn.

Let's go see if we can pick the original path back up, to run the race as it's marked out for us.

"let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God." -Hebrews 12:1-2

pine cones, seeds, and where we let go

When he was a kid, a buddy of mine went on a summer family vacation, driving halfway across the country. His younger brother picked up a conifer cone (fancy name for pine cone) from a roadside stop somewhere in South Dakota. When they got back home, his younger brother buried the pine cone in their yard, and eventually forgot about it.

In the springtime, a shoot of an evergreen shrub burst several feet out of the ground where his kid brother had buried that pine cone. It's not unusual, right? 

Yet the growth for sure astonished the family ... because it burst from the ground in the springtime ... nine YEARS after the family had returned from that trip.

Nine years. That's a decent stretch of time. Do you remember what you did, on this day, nine years ago? Unless you did something important, probably not. I sure don't. 

Jesus tells a story about someone who spreads seed to grow crops (Jesus later explains what the story means). I appreciate that this story incorporates growing seeds.

Growing from seed takes time. 

Growing from seed resists any allure of overnight success. 

It refuses to cooperate with our timelines; we have to work with its timelines. If you want decent crops in the fall, you gotta plant in the spring. No one plants in the late summer, to reap a harvest that fall.

But then again, there's only so much we can do. We can put the seed into the ground, but we can't force the seed to germinate. We must respect its timeline. We can't impose our own schedule onto it, of how and when we think it should grow.

Sometimes, when we try to help out others, we expect that once we provide help, we'll see some immediate changes. We become discouraged when we don't see it. Eventually, we stop checking the spot where we planted a seed.

Or, we focus that same expectation inward. We expect that once we learn of some better, more fruitful way to live life, we should be able to immediately apply it, and live differently about everything. We frustrate ourselves when we don't instantly show marvelous growth. We write ourselves off as a lost cause, or just slower than the rest.

Seeds take time. 

Repeat after me: seeds take time.

The grace-filled reality is that while you will forget about what seeds you helped plant with others, God doesn't forget. You'll forget about what was planted in your soil for good, but God will not. Growth requires seeds. Growing from seed takes time. It will not be hurried.

When you feel like you're in a hurry, or you're discouraged, remember this parable, and the time it takes to grow from seed. Ask God to help you adopt his rhythms of growth and grace.