Time to Begin Again

And it might be food related, no more chocolate bunnies, it might be exercise related. Get back on it, start walking, running, lifting weights, stretching, it might be your prayer time. Isn’t it funny how, like an Easter week, I think a lot of people drop their prayer time a little bit in the form of celebrating. We kind of forget to keep spending time with the Lord, but that tends to be more front of mind during lent, but we want to continue doing that. We want to give him our time. Maybe it’s your relationship, maybe you want to renew your efforts to say kind things to your husband and your children. Maybe it’s at your job, but here’s the thing, God made us work when we don’t have work to do, we are unhappy. And so, the only thing harder than stepping into the work that is required is actually not doing the work, and we know this because if I say you don’t have to do anything. You can watch whatever television you want, you can eat whatever you want. You can sleep in.

That’s really fun for maybe like two days. And we see this, even in our children during spring break, for those of you whose kids go to school and then they’re home. It sounds so great, doesn’t it? It sounds so great to children to be like, particularly those of you whose spring break fell the week after Easter, we were just like, totally eat those lollipops, watch those movies, do whatever you want. And then they’re like, what happened? They always go, I’m bored and what they mean is my soul is restless because God made us for work and he made us for rest too. And that’s why I think we could rest for one to two days, I think you can really rest for one to two days. Were you just hanging out? And your jammies or your sweatpants, and it feels amazing.

But then, we want to do something, the problem is our human brain also doesn’t want to paint. So we’re staring down the thing that we want to do and we’re like, ooh, that looks painful, but I want to help your brain get on board with the idea that not doing it is more painful. Not doing the thing creates more unrest in us than the pain of doing the thing. And listen, you know, this is true because if you’re eating chocolates everyday there’s just been lots of chocolate jokes in the membership for moms. If you’re eating chocolates every day, it doesn’t actually feel good, feels good for that 60 seconds. But then we feel kind of sick and then we start feeling lethargic and then we start feeling sad.

I wish we could all see a graph of sugar consumption to sadness. I think it would feel like a punch in the stomach, where it’d be like, oh, I totally get it for our kids too. And so wear whatever you want to begin again, it can be anything I’m using the chocolate thing, just because I think a lot of us have chocolate around our house after Easter. But again, it could be your per time or renewed effort in your relationship or your job. Maybe you want to get back on track for homeschooling and finish the year strong. Maybe you want to start that garden that you’ve been telling yourself you want to do. There is a work that God wants you to do and it’s not what your friend is doing, it’s what God is calling you to do.

And so, I want to invite you to gently step into this idea of beginning again, or just, resuming what you already were doing. I don’t know about you, I have kind of an extreme inclination in my brain where I want to like, not do anything and then do everything all at once. Kind of that all or nothing thinking or because I carry the shame of having stopped doing the thing that I said that I was going to do; I feel like the effort to start again has to be bigger, sparklier, and so sometimes we begin again, but with this manic sort of, this is going to be great. I’m going to run a marathon. I’m never eating sugar again. I’m going to be the best wife of all time and we have this big sparkly energy which does feel good by the way. I’m not going to take that away from you; it does feel good, but there’s kind of like a hollowness to it. It feels kind of saccharin, kind of sweet and fake. And instead, I want to invite all of us to begin again with a quiet strength.

Just kind of a Marian strength that just goes, thy will be done, or this is the right thing, or God has called me, right? Like mother Teresa did not run to the top of a building and go I’m going to change the world, watch me, everyone. It’s going to be great, like she didn’t come with that energy; I don’t think any of the saints did. They just kind of went, all right, Lord let’s do this. I am yours, I trust you and they stepped quietly into the work. Now, I’m a big fan of accountability partners and trying to build any sense of community. I think we’re so lonely and so I would encourage you to find a friend and quietly step into it with them and say, hey, do you want to be my walking buddy or, you know, I’m going to text you every time that I feel tempted to eat sugar and I don’t, or let’s, let’s do some sort of husband challenge together. That’s not quite the sparkly thing that I’m saying, that I think we should avoid, right?

You can do even that in a quiet way that just says, hey, let’s do this. But I promise you that as soon as you stop trying to grow and trying to reach for something you will feel sad. You will feel a growing unrest because God made us for work. He made us to reach and to learn and to grow. To grow in skills and to grow in virtue. And when we do not do that, we feel bad, some sort of bad. Now, I think one of the reasons that we don’t want to begin again is because we have not made peace with our past. We remember the many times that we’ve tried and failed and it could be trying and failing on the particular thing that we want to begin again, now, or it could just be anything that we’ve tried, even if it’s not related to our new goal.

And there’s just this, yucky, it feels like a serpent feeling of just like, no, you can’t do it, you failed so many times, who do you think you are? It’s not going to work. I especially hear this voice when I fail for like three days in a row recently. Let’s just pick walking; let’s say it’s nice outside and you’re like, I’m going to go walking and then you don’t. And then the next day, it’s a little harder. Isn’t it to be like, we’re going to go walking because your brain, and maybe spiritual tax, maybe just your memories who knows it doesn’t matter goes probably not though. You blew it yesterday and so the more of those we stack up the worst we feel. But I want you to know that is not how God works. When we ask for forgiveness, God blinks it out; it’s gone.

You shouldn’t even reach for those memories, you are new, today is new. You are not your past and your past behavior is not who you are. You are today years old, this is a completely new day, you’ve never lived today. The slate is clean and you can do anything that God wants you to do. You are not your past, make peace with it. You might need to make peace with specific memories if they keep haunting you and the way that we do that is we just relive the memory with Jesus and we ask him to tell us the truth of that time or you might do that with a whole bunch of things. Like maybe, maybe you were a wild child in your college days and you want to take all of that and put it in a basket and go, Lord, forgive me for all of this. Help me make peace with this and then let it go.

But God makes all things new. We can do anything with his strengths, but I think we don’t ask for it very often. I think we know that Bible verse, “I can do all things, through him who strengthens me.” But I think we forget to ask or to lean on it. Have you ever hurt your back or your leg and had to really put your weight on another person and you feel like you don’t want to, even on the person’s like I’m here, I’m strong, I can handle it. And you’re like, ah, I don’t want to make it hard for you. I think we do that with the Lord. This is one of my favorite quotes from Faustina in the diary, she says “when I see that the burden is beyond my strength. I do not consider or analyze it or probe into it. I run like a child to the heart of Jesus and say only one word to him.” You can do all things, which is five words, so I don’t know why she says one word.

I think she means one phrase. You can do all things and then I will keep silent. Because I know that Jesus himself will intervene in the matter. And as for me, instead of tormenting myself, I use that time to love him. So let’s pick walking. I’m picking that because it’s such a simple example, but I think that we really get spun up in our minds around the simple things that God is calling us to do. And so you begin your day and you think, oh, I’m going to walk and you look at your calendar and you’re like, oh, it’s a busy day or you look outside and you’re like, oh, it’s kind of overcast today. I want you to run to the Lord and say, Lord, this burden is beyond my strength. And this is where I think it feels silly. So we’re not leaning on him, we’re like, it’s almost embarrassing to say, Lord, I don’t think that I could manage walking today.

But it’s true, Isn’t it? It’s true that for whatever reason in our current society with your current brain, very simple things feel very difficult. And this is really where I think sometimes we think about ourselves too much. Faustina says I do not consider it or analyze it or probe into it. So we don’t sit around going, huh? I wonder why it’s so hard for me to take a walk. I wonder what happened to me in my childhood and then we just run to the Lord and say, you can do all things, Lord. So you can make it more specific to, and say, Lord, if you desire me to walk, I need you to give me the strength to fight these, this battle I’m, I’m fighting. Then she says, and then I keep silent because I know Jesus will intervene. And instead of tormenting myself, I use that time to love him. So instead of ruminating, which I think is what so many of us are doing. Ruminating, either beating ourselves up or trying to problem solve it, we can instead just lean on the Lord and praise him.

We can pray and then I think you will receive the grace and the strength to go for a walk. Or it might occur to you, like, I think this is what it actually looks like. So you say, Lord, I think you’ve called, you’re calling me to walk and take care of my body, but this burden is beyond my strength. But you can do it, I can do it through you and with you and then you just pray to our Father. And then it occurs to you, like you have this holy spirit idea, just go for five minutes. They’re like, yeah, I could just go for five minutes and that is not coming from you. That is the strength that God is giving you.

What if it starts simple, what if it’s, kissing your husband or verbally encouraging your children? Those are both very simple things. Why is it so hard for us to do it? And again, I don’t think we need to sit here and analyze or probe into why it’s so hard. It is so we just go Lord I know you’re calling me to kiss my husband and encourage my children. And I’m struggling to do that, but I know with you, I can. And then we just start praising the name of the Lord, whatever prayers you love that feel easy for you. And then let the holy spirit bring that strength to you. What if it’s that simple? What if that is how we begin again. I want you to imagine, I’m a big fan of the yellow brick road visual, I want you to imagine that you’re walking on the yellow brick road, but instead of being as wide as it was in the wizard of Oz, which felt like, you know, I feel like it was four or five feet wide and the wizard of Oz because they had to put all the actors on it. But let’s just say instead that ours is like a foot and a half wide, so wide enough that we could kind of walk on it comfortably. It’s not like a tightrope but it’s pretty easy to step off a little bit and I think that walking with the Lord is like that, where we’re like, we’re on the Elbit road. But then it’s so easy to just be like, eh, and step off of it.

Now, stepping off of it doesn’t mean that we fall into a ravine. Let’s imagine that when you step off of it, we feel gravel so we noticed that it feels a little bit different so we don’t fall off a cliff. If we fell off a cliff, every time that we turned our hearts away from the Lord. We wouldn’t turn our hearts away from the Lord as much, but we would also be probably filled with fear. But it’s not like that, instead, I think it’s, it’s much more subtle and our sinfulness, or when we turn our hearts away from God and turn them towards the world. It’s like we step off that yellow brick road and we step onto the gravel and it’s harder to walk on gravel and hurts our feet a little bit, but we can do it.

But then we’re like, it’s hard, Lord, I’m having a hard time and he’s like, yeah. Cause you’re on the gravel, my friend. This is where I want you to, just to go, forgive me, Lord, have mercy on me. Get right back on the path I want you to do this all throughout the day. I want you to do it at night. And then in the morning, I want you to pray, Lord, keep me. on the path and then at night, Lord, forgive me, for all the times I stepped off the path and all throughout the day I stepped off their Lord, forgive me. Help me get back on the path. One of the ways that I also do this is I remind myself that I am loved, and I am safe, and I am worthy and that God is with me. Those phrases helped me get back on the path because when we feel unloved or not safe or not worthy or alone, we stay on the gravel; we stay away from the Lord.

So, you know, I love this quote from Mother Teresa, I share it all the time. I feel like it’s been almost every major planner or workload that I’ve created, but it’s just still. It really captures for me how I think we should live and she says, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We only have today, let us begin.” Let us begin this day, this hour, this moment. Let us draw a line in the sand and ask for forgiveness and become a new creation and start again. With that quiet hope, that quiet strength, the quiet knowing of this is what God has asked me to do and he gives me everything I need when I need it. Isn’t that true? Hasn’t he given you everything you need when you need it. I think about the most painful things that I’ve been through: those gut wrenching moments when it feels like someone has cut a two inch hole in you. Sorry, two foot, two foot. Like gash in your chest from your chest, your stomach, and you feel like a raw open wound. You know, we’ve had that. We experienced that around like grief or really painful fights, maybe a breakup, maybe, watching a child go through something painful.

Like I think most of us have at least once in our life experienced this searing amount of pain. But on that day, on the worst day that you can remember, or a grouping of the worst days that you can remember. Did God not give you everything you needed? What we want is for him to blink away that pain, right? We want to not feel that pain at all. But when I look back on those days, I think, but I made it, I lived. He gave me enough strength to wake up the next day and the next day and I didn’t like it. I didn’t enjoy it, but I endured it; he was there; he was with me. And so it is often because of past hurts or pain or projected hurts or pain that we don’t want to begin again. We want to keep watching terrible television and eating chocolates or not walking, or, you know, withholding encouragement or kisses from her husband or kids, which, you know, I don’t think that that is a conscious decision. I think just from woundedness, we end up doing that and we end up being kind of closed and protected.

And so, we think that is better because we look at the pain of the work and we don’t want to step into the pain of the work, but I just promise you the pain of not growing is worse. It will eat you; it will grow and your unrest will grow. And so, beginning again, be brave enough to begin again. Trust the Lord to give you strength to begin again, and it’s not going to be manic sparkly, this is going to be great, I’m going to figure it all out, it is quiet, let us quietly step into today. What do you want to do today? I’m not against planning for the future. You might sit down today and make a meal plan. You might make a homeschooling plan. You might make a, give your husband more kisses plan. I think it’s okay to plan, but not from this place of fake.

I’m going to just be so great. I’m going to nail all of this. It’s just like, you know what? I’m going to begin again. Here’s a good plan. And anytime I step off the yellow brick road into the gravel, I’m going to ask the Lord for mercy and I’m going to get back on the path because I am loved. And I am safe and I am worthy of this and God is with me. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We only have today. Let us begin.

All right. My friends. I’m praying for you. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening. and have a blessed day.