Same Place, Different Angle

Have you ever stood, whether it is literally or figuratively, in the same place as someone and yet when you compared what you saw it was very different things?  Perhaps you each noticed different people or different tones of voice. Perhaps each of you picked up different verbal and non-verbal signals or nuances.  Maybe the same place you are standing has more than one problem, issue, or topic to focus on and each of you have been drawn to different ones.  Have you ever stood in that same place with someone and been amazed, or maybe frustrated, that what is being experienced isn't the same but in fact very different?

In a much simpler vein have you ever stood in the same exact place as someone and you both snapped a picture and when you looked at them you had both captured different perspectives of the same exact scene? My first trip to NYC we went to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Walking around the island that is home to Lady Liberty my brother and I both spied a great shot for a picture. Without discussing it or perhaps even realizing we had both seen the exact same shot we stopped and each of us took a picture. We even crouched in a similar manner to get in the shot what we both had seen.  Our pictures came out the same but yet very different. He was somehow able to capture things about the shot that I didn't see or pick up on.

Take a look at the following pictures. They are of the same exact places but taken from different perspectives.  Meet me below after you look through the pictures. *wink*

Central Park, New York City

The Forbidden City, Beijing China

Hollywood Sign, California

Las Vegas Strip, Nevada

Little Mermaid, Copenhagen Denmark

Mona Lisa, The Louvre

Mont St. Michel, France

Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

Niagara Falls, New York/Canada

Pyramids of Giza, Egypt

Rock of Gibraltar, Iberian Peninsula

Sagrada Familia, Barcelona Spain

Santorini, Greece

St Basil's Cathedral, Moscow Russia

Stonehenge, United Kingdom

The Acropolis, Athens Greece

The Alamo, Texas

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris

The Brandenburg Gate, Berlin Germany

The Great Wall of China ends abruptly as soon as it reaches the ocean

The Pantheon of Rome, Italy

The Taj Mahal, India

I am fascinated by the above perspective pictures. Neither picture invalidates what is being looked at, it just provides a different angle, a different view, a different perspective on that (in the case of these pictures) landmark/historical marker.

This happens all the time in life and it is an opportunity for collaboration or conflict. I can't keep track of the number of times someone else and I have stood in the same place on an issue or something but we have had very different views of how to execute it or approach it or settle it. Does that mean that one of us doesn't have valid ideas, thoughts, etc? No, it just means that we are coming at it differently and for some reason, in our culture, if we do that then we must be at odds and gather people on sides and make some noise. Why? Why is that "a thing"? Why can't we agree to agree and agree to disagree and honor the other person's intentions and motivations as they have been expressed sincerely, passionately, and with a desire for improvement?  Why are we threatened when someone expresses a different perspective than we hold?  Expression is different than demanding by the way. When someone demands of me to hold their opinion, perspective, or ideology then I shut down, dig in my heels, and refuse to budge.  The same happens if I demand someone hold my opinions. Expressing and demanding are two very different approaches to differing thoughts.

Sometimes I have to take a step back to gain a clearer view. And sometimes I have to take a step forward to see something closer. There are times I need to stretch on to my tippy toes for a look and other times I have to crouch way down.  Distance and position determine the view I have and in order to have the most complete perspective I can, it's beneficial for me to do all I can to see it from every angle possible. The more angles I view something from, the more complete the picture is for me. That benefits me and those I interact with. Sometimes our pristine or sterile view of something needs to get a little filthy with a touch of reality.  If we have a messy perspective on something it could use a little shot of sterility. Both are okay because both remind us that there is a bigger story than what we know.

Next time you find yourself looking at someone or something and you are shoulder to shoulder with someone who is looking at the same thing but expressing a different perspective, try this; switch places.  Clear your mind, blink your eyes, do your best to remove what keeps you from seeing the fuller picture and look with new eyes, open mind, softened heart.

What do you see now?

*Perspective Photos found at this site. 

Filters

I've been thinking a lot about filters.  I even recently talked a bit about filters over at 365.  Not just the ones that make my pictures look amazing or at least better but the filters that we have access to for filtering out gunk. Gunk from our water, gunk from the air, gunk from the engines running our cars. Or the filters that allow all the good stuff from something to be more present, such as coffee and tea.  Or the filters that allow the unnecessary to fall away to reveal the treasure.

If you are social media savvy and have heard of Instagram then perhaps you also know that you can put filters on the pictures you take before you share them with people.  This has made a whole bunch of average to terrible picture snappers look like they know what they are doing.  The filters Instagram offers cover a multitude of flaws, soften the sharp edges, and sharpen the too soft places.  I know filters for cameras have been around for a really long time but they have never been as accessible as they are now to the average person.  Now we all have the capability to reach for Ansel Adams heights thanks to filters!  (Yes, I am being sarcastic.)  I confess I filter the majority of my pictures and if I don't, I feel the responsibility to let everyone else know that the picture is awesome all on its own with no assistance. That's where #nofilterneeded comes into play.  I recently posted a couple of pictures of myself, which is rare to begin with.  I have zero desire to take part in the selfie craze.  But I did and I was struck with what I felt needed to be filtered and what didn't.

Here I am in the Summer of 1978.
I was four years old.
#nofilterneeded

Here I am in the Summer of 2014.
I am (almost) 40 years old.
I filtered the heck out of this picture,
I think I used every single filter there was.

What happened to my eyes and perception of self between 1978 and 2014?  That's what I am struck by.

Throughout the years I put filters in place but they worked in reverse.  Instead of filtering out the gunk they seemed to have filtered out the good. Life seems to have had a way in filtering out the potential I have within me and leaving me feeling defeated, tired, worn, and shamed.  The gunk stayed in while the treasure flowed out.  In 1978 I was too young to know defeat, but by 2014 it's an almost daily battle to not feel it.

I put the filters in place to protect myself, to shield myself from people and hurtful circumstances but the filters were faulty.  They seemed to have worked in reverse and by the time I realized they were broken and I needed to change them out I had years of gunk built up inside of me to clean out.  And some of the gunk had been there for so long that it had burrowed into my heart and set up like concrete. It was going to take some serious sweat equity to get cleaned up.  What happens over the course of years doesn't get cleaned up in a couple of days, and my 30's were spent cleaning up the gunk.  Yes, it has taken an entire decade. And then some.  Not all the gunk is cleaned out.  I'm still chipping away at the hardened muck of years gone by.

Evidence of this is the two pictures above.  In my (humble) opinion I am one of the cutest 4 year olds ever, *grin*, but at some point my eyes stopped seeing cute when they glanced at me in the mirror.  Over the years my eyes changed, my perception of self changed and today I shy away from too much time in the mirror or being looked at.  It's one of the many reasons I have zero desire to join in on the selfie craze.  I tell my redheads all the time that their eyes see differently than anyone else who looks at them.  I suppose if that is true for them, it is also true for me.  So my eyes have faulty filters still. In a decade that hasn't changed. So I still have to keep chipping away at the gunk.

When I entered my 30's it is like an alarm sounded in my life.  Warning: Filters need to be changed immediately.  So I put the sweat equity in and began the process of changing them out for new ones that worked how they were supposed to - gunk out, good in.  Turns out I needed a filter overhaul.  My mind needed a new filter, my mouth needed one too!  And my heart. Well, the filter on my heart was the most faulty of all.  And as I worked on my heart the other areas that needed a filter were easier to clean up.  So it's true, life starts in the heart and what is contained there flows out to the rest of us.

As I clean out the gunk and put the right kind of filter in place I have to be diligent to keep up on the maintenance. In our refrigerator we have a water dispenser and it gives us filtered water. But in order to keep getting filtered water we have to change out the filter 4 times a year.  Why? Because a filter catches the gunk and stops it from contaminating.  Same thing for our furnace, although we have to change the furnace filter monthly because of all the stuff floating around in our air.  So I have to be diligent in maintaining the filters on my heart, my mind, my mouth, etc and for the same reasons.  There's a lot of gunk floating around the air that my inner life breathes and ingests and I need the right kind of filter to catch those things and keep me from contamination.  And that has to be maintained by me.  Nobody else is going to take care of my filters, I'm the only one who can do that. Oh sure, other people have tried to maintain my filters for me but that never works out very well. They don't know my inner person the way the One who created me does and the way the One who created me calls me to maintenance. So I still have some sweat equity to put in but maintenance requires much less energy than cleaning up years of gunk.

While writing I stopped and took a selfie.  I, like when I was 4, have no make up on today and my curls aren't as noticeable because I put a headband on wet hair this morning.  My eyes look at the picture and send the message to my heart, "Many filters needed."  SIGH.  Thank goodness for the promise that what has been started in me will be completed, because I am a long ways off from being completed in that area of my life.  But my Creator is patient and kind and because of him I know now what kind of filters to apply to my life.

What about you? What faulty filters do you need to change out and replace with new, ones that actually work for you and not against you?

Fester Fester Rot Rot

A few weeks ago I made a mistake that I've made before.  I was working with raw chicken (stick with me on this okay?) and threw away what I didn't want in our trash can.  Over the course of the day I and my family threw other trash away on top of the raw chicken and I kind of forgot about it.  Fast forward 2 days later I arrived home and was hit with this stench wall of rotting chicken.  Oops.  The stench made me gag and I quickly removed the bag to the garage where it wouldn't stink up our home.  But the stench stayed behind for about a day.  Ugh.  I've done it before and each time I do I think to myself, "I have learned my lesson, I won't do this again" but I do.  I throw away some raw meat and it sits and festers until it rots.  And until it rots I forget about it, I neglect to take care of it.  But once the stench of the rot reaches me I am quick to dispose of it.

Some of you know this and others don't.  I'm a lay counselor.  And I've been in counseling.  And in my own personal experiences and hearing the experiences of others I have come to the conclusion that we all have some "fester fester rot rot" going on in our lives and our hearts.  We all have something (usually more than one thing actually) that we've discarded, or so we thought, and have thrown other things on top of it.  So the thing we needed to get rid of gets buried where it begins to fester.  And we don't pay much attention to it until the stench of its rot finally reaches our awareness.  At that point we either take care of it or we continue to rot and become a stench to anyone we come into contact with.  We are so quick to dispose of the actual rot and stench of something like meat but we tend to drag our feet when it comes to getting rid of the heart rot we have. The longer we let the rot sit the harder it's going to be to get the stench of it removed.  And the more pervasive the rot will be in our lives and relationships.

Each time I begin to stink and the stench of my heart rot reaches the surface of my life and touches my relationships I take the steps I need to take to get it taken care of and say to myself, "I have learned my lesson, I won't do this again" but I do.  I do it again.  Sometimes with the same issue that caused the rot, sometimes with a different issue.  But I let the rot get covered up by the day in and day out of life and I forget about it until its stench covers me.  And it's my own fault every time.  I'm aware of myself enough (I'm a counselor remember?  We are in tune even if we don't respond to the nudges) to know when rot is there that needs to be taken care of.  Why do I continue to allow myself to be deceived that "later" will be a "better" time to take care of it?  There's no time like the present is totally applicable in this instance!  Now is the time.

No this is not a commercial placed by my blog.  

It's a commercial placed by me for the purpose of this blog!  

It's a lead-in, an intro to my next point.  :) 

Here's one final (for this blog post at least) thing about heart rot that we need to know.  Just because we shoot some "Febreze" (i.e. surface fixes) all over the stench doesn't mean the rot is removed or even taken care of.  (Did you watch the video I put in?  The smell is masked but the trash is still there.  Just sayin'.) Surface fixes are short-term, temporary fixes.  In other words THEY DON'T WORK.  In order to remove the rot we have to engage in the heart, er hard, work of removing the rot.  For some this means addresses hurts from many years ago, addressing people that have contributed to the rot, taking personal responsibility for the growth of the rot, doing some honest self-evaluation, being vulnerable and transparent with others who can help (heck, asking for help!), and more.  The rot doesn't just go away on its own, we have to put the sweat equity in and own it to remove it.

How about you?  Got any fester fester rot rot going on?  (Don't say no, I will call you a liar - we all have something in us festering and rotting.)  Consider taking care of it while it's festering before it starts rotting. The festering process gives us the chance to take action.  Don't let your heart become a stench to you and others.  

Reflections...No regrets

I'm in the midst of reflecting on the past couple of years of life.  I've just wrapped up a stint as one of the front desk faces at Young Life.  God is moving me on, I don't like it one bit but I'm going to walk in obedience to it.
Here's a look back at some of my other posts in the past couple of years about my time at Young Life...
All You Ever Wanted to Know About Being a Front Desk Receptionist
An Update on All the Sides of Being the Front Desk Receptionist
My 90 Day Review
A Year in Review

Last *you* heard from me was my year review.  Here's the brief update from that point:

2012 was a year of upheaval and change in our department, it was a tough year - it was either going to make us or break us!  I think a little of both happened.

The Young Life Celebration in January 2012 was amazing.  Again, such a generous gift from Young Life to Lanny and myself.  The weather was great, we got to sit by a pool in January!  What a gift that alone was for the middle of winter.  We were spoiled rotten by Young Life and blessed.  We came home from that trip with the compulsion to help start up a Young Life Club in Falcon, where we live.  Since then we have been on the super slow track to seeing that happen but we're still inching along toward that goal.

I literally know every single employee at the Service Center - both buildings!  That's crazy to me.  It is crazy to me that I have somehow been able to retain all those people in my memory bank.

The inner-office gifts came to an end.  I actually have a job to do (admin tasks) so couldn't keep up with that!  Nobody seemed to mind, by the time those ended the ice had been broken.  :)

During an extensive renovation of our Lobby the front desk was relocated to a noisy little box (an office but...ugh!).  Fortunately the "box" contained a large white board that I decided couldn't go blank as long as I was around!  So for the time we were contained to that space I put up a quote every day.  This led to my newest 365 Experiment which is a quote a day.

I became a Barista of sorts as our newly renovated Lobby served fresh ground coffee grown in Nicaragua in a joint venture with Young Life!  Check out Beyond Beans, great coffee and a great cause!

Changes were being stirred up....

As I said at the start, God is moving me on from Young Life and I'm not all that happy about it.  I love my job.  I actually don't even have adequate words to express how much I love my job.  I'm also pretty good at my job.  I've learned a lot and I've put it into practice. I've helped my boss with some of the more tedious tasks so she is freed up.  I've done my best to make sure people who walk into the Service Center are welcomed and feel welcomed.  I've held mini-counseling sessions at the front desk (this doesn't surprise those of you who know me well) and have been a place for people to be heard.  I'm pretty good at my job and not just the admin stuff.  The relational stuff I am able to balance out with the admin.  I love my job.  But changes were being stirred up and I believe timing is everything.  The time came for Lanny and I to look at me having to earn more than a part-time income.  We see some changes being stirred up in our family life and his workplace and we knew, through prayer and discussion, that we needed me to be in a job that was full time and offered medical benefits should the time come that his job no longer does that.  Unfortunately there was nothing for me at Young Life that could offer what my family and I now need.  Btw, there is NOW.  But like I said a minute ago, timing is everything.  An opportunity and offer opened up to me so fast that I am still, almost three weeks later, trying to figuratively catch my breath!  Timing is everything.

So I've been reflecting on my time at Young Life the past couple of years and how it intersected with my personal life.  I started working at Young Life just as I was coming out of a deep depression (I bet some of you didn't know that!) and it was tough for me.  It's hard enough to exert energy on the heels of depression but combine it with my core personality of being an introvert (seriously quit arguing with me about this, I know who I am!) and the first few weeks were tough.  Even now, 2.5 years later, I prefer to spend my mornings before work not talking or interacting with others much and my evenings after work not talking or interacting with others much.  I conserve all of my energy for the front desk and the interaction it takes to do the job.  But it turns out that the "forced" interaction has been good for me.  It helped keep me from falling back into the deep depression I was in, it helped me re-enter the work of a ministry, it helped me sharpen my skill set and even further define my skills.  It also gave me the opportunity to see what kind of work had been done in me as I settled further into my skin.  It rebuilt in me a confidence that had been lost and was struggling to be found.

The decision to leave has been a hard one.  If I was ever going to leave the timing was accelerated by the changes in our family life.  I was thinking this morning about the reason why leaving is so hard for me, outside of the obvious ones of course.  And here it is.  In this particular instance obedience to God is more difficult for me because I am being asked to walk away from something that I really love, am good at, and I know is not displeasing to God.  It's something that my time is up and I don't like that one bit!  So I have had a lot of moments of second-guessing, hoping something might change, wishing I didn't hear from him as clearly as I did.  But as my time wound down at Young Life I knew deep deep down that I was being called to follow his lead and he was leading me right out of Young Life.  I don't know why exactly.  Maybe Young Life has become a comfort zone for me.  Maybe something is going to happen at Young Life that God didn't need me to witness.  Maybe all along I was only a "short timer" even though in my plans I was in it for the long haul.  I don't know.  All I know is I have had a lot of tough and emotional moments in the past 3 weeks.  And I expect I will have a few more in the weeks to come.  Introverts don't like starting over socially, well at least this introvert doesn't. It's hard for me to meet new people, it's hard for me to start over that way.  I'd rather hole up in some cave and never need to come out.  I'll be working longer days and so therefore be exerting more energy in interactions.  And for the next 6+ months I will be learning new things and really giving my brain and memory bank a work out!  There will be days that I feel incompetent and will doubt that I did hear from God about leaving.  My tough and emotional days aren't over.  But if all of those things culminate in me being exactly where God wants me to be and walking in obedience to him then I can say, even now, "I'm good."  I don't want to be anyplace other than obedience to God.  Even if it is hard and stretches me it's where I want to be if it is obedience to him.

Finally, let me tell you how God has answered a prayer of mine.  When I started at Young Life 2.5 years ago I asked people to pray for me to be a blessing to the employees and guests of Young Life.  I had no idea what I was talking about but I knew that if I was going to be a blessing then it was going to be the Jesus in me.  I didn't try to be anything or anyone other than myself, I asked God to help me be true to myself - who he created me to be - and that I would bring joy to the people I interacted with each day.  Don't get me wrong I had some bad days.  I had some days where it took everything in me to be pleasant.  I had some days where the smile on my face was more pasted on than natural and willing.  I had some days where the thought of putting on make-up and put on real clothes was overwhelming.  I had some days where my irritations boiled over and people steered clear of the front desk.  But I had some great days.  I had days in which my ability to remember someones name made their day and so therefore made mine.  I had days in which I couldn't stop smiling.  I had days in which I got to see some relief run across the face of my boss because she knew she could trust me to get the job done.  I had days that I was able to communicate value to an employee and their whole demeanor shifted.  I had more than some great days. I had many great days. And I think, just maybe, that God answered my prayer and honored my request to be a blessing.  During my final week at Young Life employees and vendors alike took time to personally communicate with me about the relationship we were able to develop in the past couple of years.  I didn't go seeking out these people, they came to me and let me know what I meant to them - a lot of them were people I didn't expect!  And on my last day God gave me a glimpse of the impact he allowed me to make at the Young Life Service Center through his grace and strength alone.  And I was blessed. I was blown away. I was humbled.  I think it was part of why the tears started and I can't quit.

No regrets.  That is sometimes an overused phrased but it applies here.  I have not one regret about my days spent at Young Life.  As I continue to reflect while I move on I may feel twinges of pain but regret won't be making an appearance.