Mind Your Mind

Today at work, it was my turn to do the devotion.

It is not my habit to sign up, but someone was covering a college fair for me, so I took his devotion day for him.

It is also my intent to choose a day for devotions in which I am feeling particularly holy.
This is not that week.

It has been nearly 7 days of stress and frustration.
Overlapping travel planning with the final details of student move-in is a lot more work than you might think. There are also people everywhere, and my introverted self is just not used to it.

I could give a series of excuses, but the end of the story is that I'm just being short with people because I feel a little overwhelmed.

Yesterday was really bad.

Work was bad, tried to go to yoga and came across an unexpected face so I left before it started, went to a girls' night with some people I didn't know, then ended up just going out with friends.
There didn't seem to be any sources of relief for anxiety.

So I wake up, right, and I have to come up with something inspiring and holy to say.

First, I checked Oswald Chambers, but that just wasn't really apt, so I glanced through my bookshelf and found Jill Briscoe and a section in one of her devotions entitled "Doing Yesterday".

It fit.

My devotion of the morning, using her words, was about the tendency of ours to replay yesterday over and over and over again, how we could have done different and said different and all the bad things. We avoid God and just try to talk with ourselves, knowing full well we do so just to avoid the words we know are coming to us from God.

It's over.
Move on.

As a writer, I recognize the capacity of one chapter to be six different things depending on perspective. I can change the entire story just by giving it a revision of outlook.

In the same way, each day we are given the opportunity to look back on our words and actions and the words and actions imparted to us. We are given the opportunity to filter them, judge them, color them however we do so choose.

I can look back on yesterday and see the aggravations and set-backs or I can look back on the hidden pieces--like the gem of a student who appeared last-minute and, despite his financial setbacks, is going to make college happen. Or like my sweet housemates who have become to me inseparable friends and confidantes. Or like church friends who seek me out. Or my sweet boyfriend who is willing to be gracious and give me the benefit of the doubt when my hurt communicates messages I don't intend them to mean.

In any situation, there is so much good underlying.

Jill's prayer is for the Lord to help her mind her mind and for the Lord to mind her heart.
It is up to us not to forget and move on or push out of our minds but actively choose to see the world just a little differently and revise our yesterdays just a bit more constructively.

Change what you can change, apologize for any misplaced words or actions, learn what you can, then look forward.

David and the Golden Finch

The British don't say "You're welcome".

Unless of course they're greeting you as you enter their dinner party or church or unless they've just done you some unfathomably good deed.

In fact, to say "You're welcome" is nearly offensive, as it connotes to a Brit that you are nearly pompous, that what you've done for them is, actually, an unfathomably good deed.

I had a British friend explain to me that even if her mother had cooked an enormous, extravagant feast, she would still not say, "You're welcome".

So when they do say it (and it's not an arrogant fool of a person), you understand something deeper about the character of the person speaking. It shows, through pomp and circumstance of a small phrase, what they value, what's of pristine importance to them.

I have often spoken before of my man David in Belfast.

David the quiet.
David the humble.
David the steadfast and hardworking.
David the kind.

When David spoke to me or showed me something, he had my entire attention, such was the unobtrusiveness of the man. If he requested my focus, it was important.

One day, David was in the kitchen, which had big sweeping windows all along the side wall looking into the front garden, and called me in when he heard me close by.

"See them finches there in the tree there? Them's golden finches. Haven't seen 'em here for ten years near."

"Uh...oh? That's great."

And he told me about the finches. And then he was done telling me about the finches.

I was half out the door back to my books when I remembered to thank him (as one should always do when a non-share-er shares) for showing them to me.

From the kitchen, I heard a quiet, "welcome".
You could have pushed me over with a bird bone.

It was the first time I had ever heard David say that word.
And it was said over finches.

My next text was to my mother, who was equally nonplussed till I told her what he'd said after.

The finches are a big deal.
Nature and creatures and creation is of great value to my master gardener friend.

He notices the living world with acute detail and stores it up.
To be let in to what fills his heart most was a great honor.

I didn't know it was an honor and a privilege until his final word, though.

In an episode of "The Office", Andy Bernard says (in my recollection of the quote), "I wish there were a way to know you were in the golden years when you're in them".

There are moments when the opportunity for connection is right there and we don't realize it. Sometimes, if we jump fast enough, we can catch them. Other times, though, they fly away like finches.

It was a lesson to me to listen, not just to the words but to all the pieces of the context and the speaker I'd gathered before.
Listen with your whole self and mental history. Hear behind the words when your people speak to you. Hear their hearts and values and interests. Hear them.