What My Instagram Doesn’t Tell You.

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So once upon a time (or in 1837) to be exact, this guy named Louis Daguerre invented the first semi-practical camera. And that was the beginning of it all.

At first, photographs were so difficult to take that only royalty could afford such a luxury. These photographs were used solely for historical purposes. No one had millions of photographs all over their houses. But then of course it began to evolve. As the photography process got simpler, more and more people were able to benefit from it.

And now here were are, able to take photographs from many different devices. We can print them, post them, and send them from our email through the abyss to someone else’s email. It’s unbelievable isn’t it?

I love pictures. I’m not always so good at remembering to take them, but I love looking back on the most perfect moments of my life and remembering. That’s usually what we take pictures of, isn’t it? The perfect moments, the smiling moments, the moments we never want to forget.

Thanks to modern technology, many of our relationships are based on pictures. How many friends from high school and college do you rarely talk to, but follow on social media through their pictures? For me, it’s a whole lot. It’s pretty incredible actually.

But I think that we forget sometimes that they’re just pictures.

We forget that nobody is posting on Instagram the angle that highlights that zit on their chin, or the pictures of their children throwing a tantrum at the grocery store. We just don’t. We like to capture the moments we want to remember.

My Instagram is a sea of pictures of Max (my apologies to all who follow me), with the occasional photo of Eric and I, usually looking our best and properly edited. Nothing wrong with that, right? But there’s a lot of other stuff to our life too.

I’m not taking pictures of the hard days, the ones that make me want to crawl back into bed. I’m not grabbing a selfie while Eric and I are deep in a heated argument. I’m not posting pictures of myself mid panic attack.

Pictures are not a full representation of anyones life. They just aren’t.

And I think that we forget that.

We look at other people’s lives through pictures and it feels like our lives suck. Like we’ve missed the perfect train that everyone else is riding.

Sometimes we just need to take a breath and remember that real lives are happening behind those pictures of real people, flawed as us.

Though pictures may not always show it, life is pretty messy for all of us.

So the next time you see a picture of someone else’s life that makes you feel inferior, remember, that it is just a picture, and they are just a person.

 

 

We’re Too Hard On Ourselves.

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I am not even sure we notice anymore. The slight jabs, the hurtful words, the manipulation, the bullying. If it were someone else doing it to us we would notice. We would see red flags and call for help, but when it comes to how we treat ourselves, we don’t give it a second thought.

We’re too hard on ourselves.

When we do something “right” it’s not enough, and when we do something “wrong” it’s world war 3 inside our own head.

Many of us wouldn’t dare to treat someone else the way we treat ourselves, especially a child.

A therapist at my boarding school used to tell me to stop myself when I knew I was beating myself up and imagine saying those things to little me. The me with crazy blonde hair, pink cheeks, a grin from ear to ear. I can’t yell at her, she’s too adorable. But the problem is that usually I’m not even aware that I’m being unkind to myself, it’s second nature. And so before I even have time to imagine cute little me, I’ve already done too much damage.

Kindness to self is so important.

If we cannot love and respect and give grace to ourselves we will not be able to fully give that to anyone else. That is truth beyond a shadow of a doubt.

We often miss that detail. We get that loving God is important, and we get that loving others is important, but loving ourselves gets thrown to the wayside. And I don’t mean loving ourselves in the self-absorbed sense, we’re pretty good at that. I mean truly loving ourselves, respecting our fears, listening to our needs, and giving ourselves a break.

Can you give yourself a break today?

When the dishes don’t get done can you say to yourself, “That’s okay, I’ll get them tomorrow.” Or when you yell at your husband for no good reason can you apologize to him and then say to yourself, “It’s okay. you’re human. You’re doing your best here”.

Because isn’t that the real truth?

We’re all just doing our best.

That’s been my new self talk: “Lizz, you’re doing the best you can.”

I’ve even started speaking it over other people. Some people I know and some I do not. When I find myself judging someone in the grocery store, I tell myself that they’re doing the best that they can too. It changes the way that I see a total stranger, like we’re allies in this messy world.

We’re all doing the best that we can in any given moment. Even in our worst moments, we’re just trying to survive, to get by, to stay sane.

If you remember nothing else I’ve written here today, remember this: Be kind to yourself. Be gentle with your heart. Give yourself grace in every moment, in every decision. When you make what feels like a mistake, honor the part of yourself that felt like that was the right thing to do. There are a million things in this world that will beat us up, so don’t do that from that inside.

We’re doing the best we can, and that is enough.

 

Honoring The Weariness.

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For all of us feeling weary today.

So many things on the calendar. So many burdens on our hearts.

Our culture tells us to get over it. Drink some coffee or a red bull. Fight the weariness. Weariness is weakness, don’t let it win.

My fellow wanderers; That is NOT TRUTH.

We are free to rest.

We are free to say “no” to another potluck.

We are free to ignore emails for the weekend.

We are free to and ask ourselves what we really need.

Honor the weariness.

And if there are commitments that we feel we cannot break, or meetings we cannot miss, we will still honor the weariness.

We will drink a lot of coffee if we need to, and chew tons of gum to keep us awake, but we will honor the weariness and the reason it is there.

Because weariness is just a part of ourselves saying “I cannot anymore, I am running on empty”.

So we will gently encourage ourselves through the weariness until we can rest away from it all, even for a moment.

 

“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” {Matthew 11:28}

Here’s What Happens When We Decide To Have People Over.

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Eric and I have a mass of people coming over this weekend. It’s homecoming weekend at our alma mater, and since we live only ten minutes away it’s only natural that we would invite all of our college friends to a bonfire at our house on Saturday.

I love having people over.  I love the feeling of having a full house, loaded with the warmth and laughter of people I love.

But before that happens there’s the whole cleaning the house thing, which I’m not so good at because I get so easily distracted.

It all started this afternoon when Eric and I both got home from work early. I had a mental list of everything that had to be done in preparation for the weekend and wasted no time delegating Eric some of the tasks I hate (vacuuming the couch, mowing the lawn, anything that has to do with laundry).

Eric is a powerhouse when it comes to chores and so he dutifully ran downstairs to throw a bunch of towels in the wash that had been sitting in a dirty laundry basket for far too long. I was upstairs sitting on the bed, suddenly struck with the most awesome DIY idea that was sure to add some character to our living room.

As soon as I heard his feet on the stairs I called out to him: “Eric?! Any way we could get the circular saw out later? I have a really good idea for some DIY decor.” I heard him stop at the top of the stairs, and then the bedroom door was opening and he was saying, “Lizz, we’re not getting out the saw tonight. Not tonight”. I hopped off the bed, “Are you sure?”. He gave me a look that could only mean that he was completely sure.

Five minutes later, I’m in the study with an open bottle of paint and some wooden letters; another DIY project that just happened to pop into my head once the former one was dismissed. Eric poked his head in to let me know he was about to go outside to mow and there I was, not cleaning or preparing for company in any way.

Finally once I got the creative out of me I was able to buckle down and do some good old fashioned cleaning, so not only is our house overflowing with partially successful DIY projects, but it’s clean too.

Unfortunately for me, we have a Max (our two-year old canine/shedding machine), so I’ll probably be vacuuming another two times before our guests step foot in our house. But that’s okay, I might even have time for another crafty project or two!

 

 

When We Only Help Others Because “The Bible Tells Us So”.

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As Christians it’s easy to fall into the trap of caring for others because “the bible tells us so”. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever been caring for or serving someone, but were kind of annoyed about the fact that you “had to”?

I have.

And I have also been on the other side of the table; being cared for by someone who obviously doesn’t care all that much.

Neither position is doing anything all that great for anyone.

You see, we think that as long as we are going through the motions of caring that it is enough, but it’s actually kind of not. It’s not the real thing.

It’s fake.

Of course we’re not robots and not everyone can be on all the time. I, of all people, get that. I can care for one person at a time and I need a serious emotional break in between, that’s just how I work.

But in the meantime, when we need a break from caring for someone else, let’s not pretend, okay?

Let’s not ask people how they are doing and then tune out when they really tell us how they are.

Let’s not offer to do something for someone else and then get annoyed when we have to follow through.

Let’s not just be nice to be nice, but let’s actually be nice to each other because we all know that life is hard and scary and complicated sometimes.

It’s not enough to say all the right things and do all the right things. It’s just not. Our hearts must be in it. Jesus didn’t tell us to just go through the motions of loving people, he said,

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

So yeah. That seems pretty straight forward.

{picture courtesy of Holley Gerth}

Why You Should Never Set Yourself On Fire.

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This morning I ran into this quote:

“You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.”

-unknown-

What an incredibly poetic and insightful thing to say.

Have you ever been that person?

The one who sets themselves on fire for everyone else because you feel it’s your duty?

I have.

I think sometimes being surrounded by Christians, we get the message that we need to do anything and everything to serve others all the time.

We get the message that we should be constantly on fire to keep others warm.

Some might argue that Jesus devoted his life to serving others constantly and I would definitely agree.

But there’s another piece to that.

Jesus also said no.

He didn’t go around healing everyone and everything.

He didn’t.

People went un-healed while Jesus walked the earth!

He knew when to draw limits.

He knew when he needed to be alone.

He devoted his whole life to others, but knew the moments that were just for him.

It sounds to me like Jesus really knew himself inside and out. He loved and respected himself enough to set boundaries in his work.

So why don’t we do the same?

We run around like chickens with out heads cut off, trying to fix other people, and serve other people with nothing left in the tank for ourselves.

We are so locked in to loving our neighbor that we forget that we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

If we don’t love ourselves in the deepest, healthiest sense of the word, our foundation for loving others crumbles.

That’s when we become bitter servants. Not joyful servers.

There is so much freedom in loving others and supporting others without carrying the weight of the world on our small human shoulders.

For many of us, our big hearts and deep ache for the world’s sadness, drives us to do a million things half heartedly instead of one thing whole heartedly.

The times will come when we may choose to sacrifice for someone else. And when those times come we will be willing and strong because we are not charred from doing that frantically every second already.

We will not be setting ourselves on fire, but stepping into the fire. It will be a choice and an honor.

Let’s stop setting ourselves on fire to keep everyone warm. It’s not our job to save the entire world with our bitter self-sacrificial servanthood.

We need to love and strengthen our own heart and mind, and be ready to step into the fire when those times come.