MY BLOG POSTS

Our family lived in Costa Rica in 2005. When we first moved there, I hated it.

I know. You’re thinking I’m a crazy whiner. And you’re right. But here’s the deal: I was expecting tropical paradise. The reality – at least in San Jose – wasn’t quite that.

We didn’t have a car when we lived there, so we walked. A lot. And those first few weeks, all I saw was what was on the ground – it was nasty. And when I happened to look up a little, I just saw all the gates in front of the houses, the barbed wire protecting the gates, the armed guards protecting the barbed wire protecting the gates.Until we moved to Costa Rica, the only foreign countries I had visited were Canada and Spain. And, while Costa Rica is not third world, it is not Canada or Spain, either.

So I whined and complained and wiped the mold and trash and animal debris from my shoes everyday and wondered why in the world people I had talked to raved so much about this country. It was smelly and gross and the end of our year there couldn’t come fast enough.

And then, one day, I looked up. Way up. And suddenly, immediately, my perspective changed.

San Jose is in a valley, completely surrounded by mountains. Beautiful, green mountains. Above the mountains, there is an incredibly blue sky. Having grown up in central Florida and moved to north Texas, mountains were a vacation destination, not a daily sight. And these mountains were amazing. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. Then I started noticing other things. I’d be sitting in class (we were studying Spanish at the amazing Spanish Language Institute) and see a hummingbird flitting outside. Occasionally, we’d even seen parakeets. I looked around and saw trees with fruits that I couldn’t identify. In our own front yard, we had an avocado tree — free, fresh guacamole year ’round! I started noticing smells, too. Good smells. Coffee beans roasting. Bread being baked. Tropical flowers.

In less than two months, I went from hating this city to being in love with it. I barely even noticed the nasty ground, the bars or barbed wire. By the time our year there had ended, I was in mourning. I didn’t want to leave. I knew I’d miss it so much. And I do.

I’m sure you can see the spiritual parallels to this story. I know God has reminded me of this often in the years since. It’s easy to see the “yuck” factor in our lives. People we don’t like, situations  that annoy us. We can get stuck looking at the yuck, thinking about the yuck, wallowing in the yuck. And we miss the beauty. It’s there. Even in the worst of situations. Sometimes, I know, you have to look really hard. You have to force your eyes up. Way up. But beauty is there because God is there. Right with you. Every step of the way.

Ps.121:1-2

¹ I lift up my eyes to the mountains—     where does my help come from? ² My help comes from the Lord,     the Maker of heaven   and earth.

My week wasn’t perfect, despite my blog attempt to make it so :). But it was great. It was great because I chose to listen to Paul’s advice in Philippians 4:11-13. In these verses, Paul tells the Philippians that he has learned the secret of contentment. Are you ready for this secret? Here it is: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Paul isn’t saying that if I believe hard enough, I’ll get everything I want. God isn’t a genie. He is God Almighty. To prove that point, Paul wrote this, not from a mansion or a five-star restaurant, but from a prison cell. He was writing to believers who would be persecuted for their beliefs, treated unjustly by those around them, considered crazy for their faith.

What Paul is saying is that we can be content no matter where we are. I can be content even if I am having a bad week, even if a someone is mad at me, even if I have a million tasks to accomplish, even if my muscles ache and my head is pounding. Contentment is not based on circumstances. I know this, too, because I have had days where everything is going well — people love me, the scale lies to me, pumpkin spiced lattes flow — and I still get cranky and irritable. Because it isn’t good enough. In the words of Augustus Gloop (I have “Willy Wonka” on the brain!) “I want more!!”

So on those days, God gently reminds me of this truth, a truth Paul learned from Jesus himself: life doesn’t have to be perfect for us to be content. Contentment is a choice. I can choose to be content no matter what is happening around me.How? Because “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Let me tell you about what’s been happening with me, lately: I write a blog about saying no, and I get flooded with things that I should say no to (but can’t manage to say no to them all). I write a blog about not worrying what others are thinking, and get flooded with opportunties to have people dislike me. I give a devotion on confrontation, and spend the next week facing more confrontations than I normally have in three months.

So this post is going to be about how a week can go by with no problems, no drama, no hate. How life can be terrific, fantastic. How I can eat a bag full of candy and not gain weight. How my students will think I’m wonderful, and my kids will shout from the rooftops that I am the greatest mom ever. My husband will rise up and call me blessed. I will hit only green lights on the way to school. My laundry will wash itself, and walk, folded, into my dresser. I will have a pumpkin spice latte on my desk every morning and a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical on my DVR every night.

I’ll let you know how it works out 🙂

I want to be a woman of excellence. That is my desire. It is not, however, always the reality. I was challenged in that this week. A friend in my Bible study shared something she learned at a recent conference. The speaker encouraged those in the audience, in their pursuit of excellence, to focus on the small things. At the grocery store, for instance: put your grocery cart back where it belongs instead of leaving it half up on the curb; put the bread back on the shelf when you realize you don’t want it, rather than stuffing it on whatever shelf is nearest; look the cashier in the eye and ask how she is doing instead of checking email or browsing through the magazines. These are small ways to be a woman of excellence.

I can’t get that thought out of my mind (in large part because I am always putting my cart on the curb and my bread in the magazine racks!). When I think of excellence, I think of “big” things – being active in church, helping those in need, that kind of thing. And those are important. But my days are filled with “little” things – grocery shopping, grading papers, doing laundry. Am I being excellent in those areas? Or do I not even think about those things because I don’t think they matter? Or because no one really sees them? Getting caught up on laundry impresses no one. And, seriously, there really is no such thing as being “caught up,” anyway!

We just finished the book of Colossians in our Bible study, and in it, Paul encourages the believers, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than men.” That is the secret of being excellent. Not doing things that people notice and praise me for. Not doing things that are “big” and I think will impress God, but doing “whatever” for God. Doing laundry for God, not men. Grading papers for God, not men. Granted, “men” benefit from those things. My kids enjoy having clean laundry, my students…well. sometimes they may wish I didn’t grade that paper! But far too often I do things for the praise of men and not for the Lord. And if I think no one is watching or “it doesn’t really matter,” then I cut corners or shove that bread on the wrong shelf (because I’m in a hurry to get home and do laundry!!).

But I want to be a woman of excellence.  I want to pursue God with my whole heart in everything I do, whether small or big. I don’t want to shirk the little things and think I can make up for it with the big stuff. Being excellent is a whole lot easier in theory than it is in reality. But I don’t want to be theoretically excellent. I want to be really excellent.

So I will focus on the small things, I will look for opportunities to do things no one else will see or notice or care about, things just between God and me. Like a secret club. Not to win’s God’s approval. He has already, in his incredible grace, given me that. But because I love him and I want to be like him. I want to be excellent because, as the Psalmist says, God’s ways are excellent, and I want to walk in them.