Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

recalling the powers of “what if” & a reminder to choose joy

Following several days of pure bliss, I succumbed on Sunday to a few hours of good ol’ fashioned What If Anxiety. I kept forgetting to breathe, as my husband calls it. It was a trifecta of external stimuli: a couple of failed side dishes I had cooked for beloved friends (minor in the scheme of things but disappointing); a rouge, really violent hailstorm that did some mean damage to my beloved vegetable and flower gardens; and (the biggest What If of them all) waiting on health news regarding one of our most beloved young people.

I definitely kept forgetting to breathe. My mind kept rolling over the worst case scenarios for each of these, projecting into the future all the most terrible extrapolated consequences: They’ll never come to the farm for dinner again and probably think I am a kitchen fraud. I might as well give up gardening. I am definitely a fraud. She has something very wrong with her health but won’t reach out for help. Then I’d furiously resist those negative thoughts and scold myself for the struggle, because I know better than that by now. And that resistance created more tension. So I ate a second helping of dessert and got mad at myself for that too because vacation is over ma’am and you are so weak and also not a very good runner. Healthy living fraud.

Wow. Only one of those external stressors really mattered to life; but worry has a way of sneaking in through tiny openings to crack open the door and let the big stuff in. Have you ever been in such a tailspin?

As Sunday evening drew to a close, the biggest What If was silenced, and we went to bed thankful and exhausted. We were happy to be home and safe and ready to approach the threshold between all those previous days of bliss and the fresh, brand new work week. I muscled my thoughts back into the light. And I finally remembered to breathe.

Monday morning after Handsome left for the Commish, I plunged into all kinds of chores around the house, allowing the physical activity and sweetness of domesticity to drum up more positive vibes. Eventually Klaus and I walked around the farm, just to survey the storm damage with calmer eyes. The weather that morning was much more like early October than June. Bright and crisp, soft breezes, mellow. I could barely relate all of that crystalline brilliance to Sunday’s low, black canopy, woolly humidity, and violent wind and hail. I noticed a clarity inside myself, too. The storm had passed and everything felt fresh and good again.

The facts followed suit. Once I had the fortitude to really examine my gardens, I found only minor damage. Some broken vines and torn leaves, sure, and a few marshy beds that were begging for a stretch of warm sunshine to dry out. But all of it was more of a shakeup than a tragedy. And I had to laugh at my Yesterday Self for being so devastated at nothing. I also had to stop and give lots and lots of thanks for all the good news we had received concerning the much more important worries in life.

So I walked around correcting small injuries to various plants and re-threading tomato vines, harvesting slashed-off zucchini blossoms and deciding that the fallen stone fruits (still unripe) would be great to crush and feed to the hens.

The raised beds are actually fluffy & gorgeous…xoxo

I recalled so many other times in life when my worries turned out to be far scarier than reality. Often the anxiety can be quieted with just some time, some breathing, and lots of deliberate trust. Things really do tend to work out. But resisting fear is different than choosing faith.

Choosing Joy.

How wonderful to remember all of this. The mental games of What If are powerful. It is up to each of us moment by moment to choose to put that power to good use. We can funnel our vast imaginations into fears and worries and extrapolate terrible future chains of events; or we can harness the same exact power inside ourselves and project incredible future outcomes.

We can visualize and aim for beauty, strength, success, progress, healing, connection, abundance, and miracles. We can see the damage and exaggerate it with our dim perspective; or we can see the damage and give thanks that so much can be recovered, that circumstances, just like the weather, can so suddenly turn around.

Choosing our thoughts matters, in case you need the reminder today like I could have used it on Sunday. Our thoughts can steer our feelings and our behavior. They can literally shape both our perspectives and our circumstances along the way.

Choose Joy. It won’t always come easily, but it is always available.

Choose Joy over and over again, no matter how things look and especially now matter how you feel, temporarily.

P.S. This blog post is dedicated to two of my best friends, who could not be more different from each other: Mickey, who had the presence of mind on Sunday to assure me that, in fact, some stress can strengthen plants and trees (so true). And Brittany, whose already gorgeous life is suddenly brimming with some mammoth What Ifs. I am down here in Oklahoma sending up magical possibilities and promises for you friend!

Choose Joy.
Magic is Real.
The Gardens will be Fine.
So Will She.
XOXOXO

Everybody, Always by Bob Goff (book review & some encouragement)

Oh friends, have you read this book yet? Or do you follow the author anywhere online? He offers plenty of encouraging, challenging stuff in highly digestible format, on Instagram for example. In fact, I think that Bob Goff once wrote a study series for the You Version Bible app, which is what put him on my radar, long before I knew about his books. Love Does is next for me to read, though it was first for him to write. Okay. I have been meaning to talk to you about this for several weeks. My friend Kellie and I read it at the same time, just after Christmas, and now every time we see each other, at least one of us makes an excited reference to something in the book. Our husbands haven’t read it yet, but after so many weeks of summary and discussion they have a pretty good idea of its contents.

There’s a whole funny story about this moment that will probably lose all its humor in translation so just trust me here.

The book is just 223 pages long and divided into 23 stand-alone chapters that read more like parables from the author’s own life. Sometimes the stories connect, as is bound to happen when they are true; but as Kellie once noted, you can drop in and read a chapter here and there, sporadically and not necessarily in order, and still glean plenty of richness, without losing any sense of continuity. It’s neither a serious nor a studious book, though I took lots of notes and highlighted with abandon. Goff’s style (oh heck let’s be on a first name basis with the guy… I am pretty sure he wants it this way…) Bob’s style is folksy, affable, and casual, though he is highly educated and worldly enough. He refers to characters in is life over and over again as his friends, so much so that by the end of the book I was wondering how he qualifies that word.

Is it a Christianity book, or a spirituality book? I would say without a doubt, that Everybody Always is written with a Christian teaching but is approachable enough for readers from any discipline. It’s not so much about declaring right and wrong as it is about inclusion. About embracing and showing love to, well, everybody you see, all of the time. Bob presses us with bear-hugs into God’s extravagant grace (page viii) and powerful Love, and he shows us through his own life experiences how Jesus is Love and how Love is a verb and how all people in the whole world need and deserve it, no matter what. Kind of the opposite of tribalism, unless you are of the mind the entire human race is one big tribe.

One of my favorite themes from Everybody, Always is the recurring phrase, “People who are becoming Love…” Bob uses this to illustrate all kinds of messages. He starts one sentence after another with these words and finishes with examples of how humans can make meaningful efforts for transformation, for generosity, for greater openness. And it got me to relax deeply. It takes the pressure off, that old expectation for absolutes, that we are either good or evil, all at once; and it affirms the opportunities we all have for being, sort of, “in process.” I really, really groove that. Bob never lowers standards for Christian excellence or for good, basic human citizenship; he just acknowledges that some changes, especially the permanent kind, are gradual. Becoming Love. How beautiful. Here are just a few such turns of phrase…

People who are becoming love experience the same uncertainties we all do. They just stop letting fear call all the shots.

People who are becoming love want to build kingdoms, not castles. They fill their lives with people who don’t look like them or act like them or even believe the same things as them. They treat them with love and respect and are more eager to learn form them than presume they have something to teach.

People who are becoming love are with those who are hurting and help them get home.

Let’s spend some of our abundant energy on spiritual evolution and on growth, and let’s abandon the weird need to be perfect, both for ourselves and for each other. Let’s see our shortcomings, remember that God meets us there, and chase after solutions with Love.

So many anecdotes stand out to me, all these weeks later.

One is the chapter about Carol, the neighbor for whom Bob and his family threw an actual parade that became a . She was also at the heart of a fantastic walkie-talkie story. Carol made a brief appearance in the book but made a deep impact on me. The same must have been true for the Goff crew, that Carol was only in their life for a short time but in their hearts forever: “We found ourselves in the blast radius of her stunning love and kindness.” Wow.

And then there was the airport terminal employee who was so loving to all strangers and passersby and with whom Bob learned to cultivate a friendship in a series of just three minute interactions. Kellie and I had a lot to exchange about this!

Bob’s dad and the pickup truck that needed oil and then the homeless man who slept in it. Such a layered parable!! I cannot tell it better than the author does.

The witch doctors. Man. If you read this book (please do) and have the heart to discuss, I would really like to hear your thoughts on how this particular story goes.

Handsome and I, together with Kellie and her husband Mickey, have been working privately on some exciting projects these past several months. Along the way we have socialized and eaten dozens of amazing meals together, talking deeply with each other about things God has brought to our attention. Some of it has been difficult. Most of it has been unbelievably beautiful. We have prayed deeply with and for each other and our loved ones. We have enjoyed some clear and vibrant direction from God along the way, too, in addition to innumerable answers and unexpected refinement.

This is our tiny little, happy, adventurous, loving, miracle seeking church.

We are trying, in our own ways, to build a little community. And after reading The Book of Joy mid-winter, then watching The Kindness Diaries, this book’s appearance was well timed. This sentence soaked into my bones regarding our tiny little community:

Our friends do things like this for us. They help us see the life Jesus talked about while giving it to us in smaller pieces- sometimes just a teaspoonful at a time.

The book is not only about human relationships, either. Everybody Always also points the reader continuously back to God, over and over again back to the true source of Love and grace. Extravagant grace, let’s remember. And it edges out our human tendency for punitive judgement. “Shame makes us leave safe places. It mutes our life and our love. It’s the pickpocket of our confidence.”

Something new in my faith walk this year has been flexibility and trust, on a daily basis, not only with the mammoth, sometimes abstract feats. I have felt God urging me to relinquish control over comfortable routines and lean into the tiny unknowns with more joy, like He wants me to be open to surprises. Toward the end of the book, a chapter about climbing Mount Kilimanjaro really spoke to me. And the messages were all linked intimately back to my many visits to Colorado with Jocelyn. I will never forget climbing those Estes Park mountains and scrambling up giant rocks as she gave me verbal cues and as we both gulped in nature’s beauty. “When you’ve got a guide you can trust, you don’t have to worry about the path you’re on.” And this… “We’re all going to trip as we try to follow Him through the difficult terrain of our lives. But when we do, we’ll bump into Him all over again. Faith isn’t a business trip walked on a sidewalk; it’s an adventure worked out on a steep and often difficult trail.” Yes!!

She cut wild sage for me before I left for home on that first trip, and I still have it. xoxoxo

Ok I am gonna wrap this up. I hope this has sparked your appetite to read Everybody, Always. If you do, or if you already have, please send me a note with your thoughts! Or comment below! It is all such great food for discussion. Thanks so much for reading this alongside me, Kellie, I love you!!

“When joy is a habit,
Love is a reflex.”
~Bob Goff
XOXOXOXO