change

accepting the invitation to wholeness.

~ mollyflinkman ~ 4 Comments

I set out into this year with a pretty simple, albeit, kind of intangible goal: Let hard things change me instead of trying to change the hard things.

So, about that.

I have been reminded lately that when you start praying to see change in your own life, you will, in turn, start to see the things in your life that need changing.

Shocker, right?

And, as it would be, I have recently become convicted of some pieces of myself that need changing.

They are things which, were we to sit down and discuss them over coffee (that sounds nice, actually), wouldn’t overly alarm you. They are “small” things–mindsets, habits, tendencies. They are pieces of my personality that I could probably chalk up to, “Well that’s just how I am,” if I really wanted to.

But I’ve always believed that particular excuse to be moo¹ and sneakily able to hold me back from who God wants (and calls) me to be.

And so, for a few weeks, I tried to change. I said various generic statements to myself:

Stop feeling that way.

Stop thinking like that.

Stop worrying about this.

But then nothing changed.

I still felt like the ugly things had some fingernail holds, and I couldn’t shake them despite how many times I prayed that they would just go away.

It was then that I stumbled into a few verses from Psalm 119.

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Those verses stuck in my brain. I thought about them and thought about them and thought about them, and realized that I had been trying to get rid of the ugly parts of my soul without replacing them with anything Good and Worthwhile. I was just willing them to leave and then hoping to just move on without them.

I don’t think that’s how transformation works.

It was when I started inclining myself toward Truth that I noticed my heart start to change. It was when I started to prioritize the time I spent reading through what God promises and wants for me that I realized how futile it was to try to change without actively acknowledging what He actually had to say about any of it.

And it was then that I started to feel the life in His ways.

(Although I certainly still have a long way to go.)

And then, a few days ago, I read an essay Sarah Bessey wrote² which subsequently helped cross a few more “t’s” in this particular train of thought.

Here’s an excerpt from the end of her essay:

I think that conviction has gotten a bit of a bad rap in the Church over the past little while. It’s understandable. We have an overcorrection to a lot of the legalism and boundary-marker Christianity that damaged so many, the behaviour modification and rule-making and imposition of other people’s convictions onto our own souls.

But in our steering away from legalism, I wonder if we left the road to holiness or began to forget that God also cares about what we do and how we do it and why.

Conviction is less about condemnation than it is about invitation. It’s an invitation into freedom. It’s an invitation into wholeness.

Perhaps our choices towards those invitations from God are really an intersection for our agency or free will and the Holy Spirit’s activity – maybe that’s where transformation begins.

Conviction is less about condemnation than it is about invitation.

It’s an invitation into freedom.

It’s an invitation into wholeness.

This is the kind of change I want for myself.

And what I’m seeing clearly is that accepting the invitation into wholeness is not passive.

Transformation will not just happen to me by sheer willpower alone.

It starts with the choice to change and is heavily dependent on what I choose to fill myself with. And then?

The promise of life and wholeness through the transforming work of the Spirit.

And, well, that seems pretty worth it to me.

¹ If this reference is not lost on you, then we are already friends, and you understand me on a very deep level.

² Here is the link to Sarah Bessey’s essay again. It made me think about a lot of things. It might make you think about a lot of things, too. You should read it in its entirety, and then we can discuss it over coffee.

i want the best time of my life to be now.

~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

When I was a senior in college, a girl who had recently graduated told me that she would give anything to go back to school.

“It was best time of my life,” she said. “Nothing will ever compare.”

Now, I had quite a lot of fun in college (see: hosted floor talent shows and road tripped with my friends to every football game so I could watch the cute wide receiver for examples), but even then I think I balked a little at her comment.

Maybe I’ve been thinking about it because the weather dipped back down into the seventies yesterday and reminded me that a change in season is on my horizon. Maybe it’s because all my teacher friends are decorating classrooms and meeting new students. Maybe it’s because Lily starts preschool on Monday.

In any case, my resolve remains strong: I refuse to believe that nothing will ever compare to right now.

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I want the best time of my life to be where I’m at now, but, more importantly, I want to be able to say that in every season. With every new milestone. 

This thought process always makes me think of the Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour,
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I suppose I could sink to grief. Agonize over the fact that Lily is entering this new, more independent phase or wish I could freeze everything exactly as it is right now.

But, what good would that do anyone?

And, besides, when I think of every new phase—the new jobs, the new people, the new kids, the new houses, the new milestones—each one has added something beautiful to my life (even if it was hard to see at the time). Even during those hard seasons, I don’t think I could ever say, “I just wish I could go back.” (at least, I hope I didn’t.)¹

I want to be a person who balances nostalgia with realism. Who holds onto and cherishes the moments while I have them but also finds joy in the moments of letting go and moving forward. I want to embrace the beauty of new seasons rather than trying to keep my feet rooted in the past.

That’s what I want.

(So, feel free to remind me of these thoughts when Lily starts kindergarten, leaves for college, and/or gets married someday.)  😉

 

¹ I certainly don’t mean to downplay the tragic and/or devastating seasons of life some people face. I imagine those moments are wrought with many feelings of wanting something back that has been lost or taken away. I’m mostly talking here in terms of the natural changes and milestones we seem to continually face as a family. The mostly trivial but necessary things.

the problem with kids.

~ mollyflinkman ~ 2 Comments

People used to laud Lily on her sleep habits. “Oh,” they said, “How wonderful that she’ll sleep anywhere!” “How fantastic,” they said, “that she sleeps through the night.” “She,” they said, “is a great sleeper.”

Then she turned two and a half. Suddenly, she started waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to bed. For a time, she decided 4:45 a.m. was a reasonable time to wake up in the morning. She held hour long bedtime standoffs and decided naps could be grounds for a battle as well.

Everything I read and everybody I talked to said the phase would be short. “Be consistent and sleep habits will go back to normal,” they said. But months and months passed, and on more than one occasion, Jake came home and found me tear-stained and prostrate on the floor of a quiet house because it was the only way I knew to decompress the terribleness that was bedtime.

But sleep isn’t what this essay is about. It’s about the real problem with kids which, if you ask me, is this: They convince you that they are good at things and then they decide to stop being good at those things.

Or more plainly, they constantly change.weekendrules (2)

Lily was my champion sleeper. And then, she up and realized she could have her own opinions about things and changed the whole ball game on me. I wasn’t ready for it. She blindsided me and there was no fancy Daniel Tiger jingle to convince her otherwise (believe me, I tried all the things).

Right now we seem to have reached a treaty–a season of bedtime peace–and I’m learning to enjoy these times because I know they are bound to be short-lived. Surely there is another regression in our future which will shake up our rhythm and force us to find a new beat altogether (if Norah stops inhaling all food as she threatened a few months ago, so help me).

It can be defeating. For me, it always seems like my girls hit a regression or make a change just as I’m feeling pretty good about things. When I feel like I have it all together, I’m always reminded that I actually don’t.

As parents, I think it would be easy to live in constant frustration that nothing ever stays the same. It’s in these moments though that I am reminded of the power in my own insufficiency. I’ll never have it all together, and I’m thankful that constant change reminds me of this. Regressions in parenting are a thorn in my flesh, but there is joy knowing that my responses to these frustrations can give room for Christ’s strength if I let them.1.jpgIt doesn’t make it easy, but it does make it worth it.

And so, I’d like to dedicate these thoughts to my sleeping babes. To Lily who has learned that the sleep-time battle isn’t worth fighting and to Norah who hasn’t yet figured out that there’s a battle to be fought. May the beauty of her ignorance be long lasting and may we have patience, wisdom, and plenty of coffee the moment she figures out otherwise.