Season of Change!

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did I sac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:8)

By faith.

He set off and had no idea where he was going.

Let’s pause and think about that for a second: Abraham was called to a place that he would later receive as his inheritance, but he didn’t know where he was going.

He didn’t know where he was going, but he picked up all his stuff (“all the possessions he had accumulated”) and set out. Left his home; left what he knew.

What do we do when we’re faced with change? Lately, I’ve been reading a book called The Sacred Enneagram (it’s good— get it), and I’ve been thinking (I mean, really thinking) about the fact that we are all wired up uniquely. I mean, it’s ridiculous how we’re all made up of the same stuff (blood, etc.), but each one of us is this complicated ball of yarn and fabric, totally unique in our responses and theories and coping mechanisms. Just thinking about how different you and I are reinforces my belief in a Perfect Creator who put all of this stuff together, and it also humbles me— when I think about how different my response to pain is from my husband’s, this thought immediately comes to mind: “Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master servants stand or fall” (Romans 14:4). You and I are so different, how could we ever judge each other? I have no idea how you were designed to work— and even if I know, who am I to say if it’s right or wrong? 

(It’s more complicated than that, I know, but you know what I mean)

So today, I’m looking at changes. Change happens all the time. Things break and get replaced. Rules and laws get amended. Politicians get elected and fired. Friends move. People pass on to glory before we do.

For me, I like change. I like new opportunities and a different view— change helps me think of new things; a change in perspective literally inspires a change in perspective for me. I grew up rearranging my bedroom when I got in trouble; Virginia Redding at Pine Street used to let me stay inside and rearrange her classroom when I felt overwhelmed (I didn’t know that about myself, but she did).

But here’s the wrench, what stresses me out: not knowing what to expect. I like change, but I like to know what the change is going to look like. I like to rearrange and reevaluate and repaint and reorganize. I like to meet new people and learn new things, but I like to know what the layout of the airplane is or what side of the hotel my room is on or where my table is going to be at a conference. I like change, but I like to know that I can escape if I need to. I like to know that I can hide if I need to. 

Basically, I guess I like to be in control of the change happening around me.

Here’s where a smiley face emoji would go.

So today, this is what I’m talking to myself about: where is the good in the change happening all around us in our community? Because there is so much good to be had. Not good because you’re glad people are retiring or getting promoted or getting married or widowed or divorced, but good because it’s good to rotate the crops and take a bath and change light bulbs and oil filters and diapers and house colors and outfits.

And when it’s organizational change, we step up and welcome the new people. For the folks in our county, we’ve said goodbye to so many dear friends in the last four or five years, but here is what I hear from the people who are wiping their hands and looking up and down the hallway at new signs over doors and new rules regarding parking lots: when do the kids get here? What new tradition are we going to try to start or carry on this year? We’ll make sure there are people who still remember when Evelyn and Ginger didn’t go outside for the fire drill that time, and we’ll laugh at seniors who still can’t find the door to the basement (do not ask us, guys— everyone is lying to you. They will never, ever tell you). 

And we will help our new principals, assistant principals, teachers, coaches, and students to be as successful as they can be. Because we love this town. Because we love Rockdale. Because we love these students. Because we know that, in a family, an individual’s success is the whole family’s success. But mostly, because we know that there is gold buried in this place. There is gold in each person-- the children and the grown-ups— who has been called to share space with us this year. 

You might not know it, so I’ll just tell you: there are treasures in Rockdale county, and if you’re here it’s because He believes you’ve got some of what it takes to help us call forth this gold. There is a calling on this third smallest county in the state. There is something special about this place. 

God has not moved. He has not changed His mind or His address. He has not changed your assignment. Every kid walking into each of our classrooms deserves to get what He called us to give. And I need to let go of sentimentality and fear and embrace this new season and the victories that are before us. And if I need to wear a name tag bigger than a name badge all year to make sure that we get to know each other like family, I’ll do it. My job is to help the newbies WIN. My job is to help my new principal WIN— to succeed in outrageous ways. I want to inspire our new superintendent to be so grateful to have arrived in this county that he actually cries at night before he goes to sleep. 

We are being called out upon the water, Rockdale county teachers, parents, business owners, students, administrators, baristas, ministers, lawyers, judges, secretaries, landscapers, builders, coaches. We have been given charge of future versions of ourselves. They need our whole hearts.

We are being called UP to greatness. Let’s resist the fear of change and embrace the possibility of greatness. We have been given the honor to call forth the gold in the children in our community. Let’s not be distracted from that tremendous calling. Let’s lock arms and call it forth.

New Season: Writing & Editing

Hi all!

The summer of writing has begun! Thank you for your notes and TRAFFIC! I will update you here periodically, but for now all past content is being edited! Please email me with any questions!

Sam

first, they gotta have a vision

So, everybody's talking about school lately.

I almost hashtagged school.

#school

And I verbed a noun. Hashtagged.

I've been thinking about school and thinking  about my students and about their parents, and about all of my nieces, and the children of my friends, and I wonder how you guys let them walk up and down stairs without worrying about them, much less actually let them get on big yellow buses in the morning to spend whole days out of your sight.

I'm serious-- there was a period of days a while back when I would lie in bed at night and pray for my nieces and I kept having this recurring image of them walking carefully down the stairs in their homes (whatever happened to ranch homes, Nathan and Lucy, and Diane and Duke?? You guys couldn't get sprawling compounds somewhere?). I prayed for those girls about those steps for days.

Anyway, school.

I've been thinking, as teachers do, about how to help my students become more successful. But the way I'm thinking about their success has more to do with how to help THEM become more successful rather than how successful *I* do as a teacher. Always, there are things I can do to improve my practice, but part of this season's improvement on my part is figuring out how to help them improve their part. Maybe it springs from my teacher's heart as a believer, but I don't think it helps my students to tell them everything. I think that the things they will remember the longest and the purest are the things that they discover  on their own.

Like page numbers.

I kid you not-- I need to ask my old English teachers, but these guys refuse to look up chapters in a book. They also tend to want someone to call out dictionary pages. If someone asks, "Swaney, what page is this story on?" I will tell them without fail to look it up. Well, unless I'm in a hurry. Okay, sometimes I tell them the page number, but you know what I'm saying.

So they're here and they look at us with these eyes and they trust us. Man, it levels me when I think of all of the unmerited trust these guys have for us when they first meet us-- first day of school and they don't even know me, but they look at me with hands folded and eyes open and listening for where I want them to write their names and the date and do I want them to write the name of the assignment? Trust. I'm the expert. I could tell them virtually anything and they give me the benefit of the doubt.

Like, once I told my kids that back in the day, we used to have stationary bikes in ISS (in school suspension) and if you were sent to ISS you had to take a shift on the bike. I told them that this was how we powered the school until they (who is "they"??) finally hooked us into  the grid from Atlanta.

Anyway, I've been thinking  about how to help them become more proactive. They come equipped with brains to learn. They are born with them and they show up in my classroom with them. They are hard-wired for it. Learning makes  you feel good. There are all kinds of factors (learning disabilities, etc.) that get in the way sometimes, but their brains still respond to learning in a positive way-- it's science, I tell them.

Sometimes, we have to get past the quarterback in their minds that stands at the door and threatens to throat punch any new attempts at information. This guy stands on their noses and yells back at them "YOU CAN'T DO THIS!!! IT HURTS!!!! IT'S HARD!!!! LET'S EAT ICE CREAM!!!"

That same guy plays on a couple of teams in my own brain, too.

So here's where I'm at-- there's a verse that says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29: 17). Without a purpose, without a direction (a vision-- a plan), people aren't sure which direction to start walking, or which book to read first, or which choice to make in regard to...almost anything.

And now we're talking about purpose.

Telling a student that he'll be glad he has a diploma one day isn't inspiring. Even discussing his game plan for [insert name of Ivy League school here] doesn't present enough of a sense of "YAHOOOOO" to really make anyone work consistently for their goal.

Purpose "is closely linked to ‘flow’ - the state of intense absorption in which we forget our surroundings and ourselves. If you have a strong sense of purpose, you’re likely to experience flow more frequently. And as Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi has shown, flow is a powerful source of well-being. The more flow we experience, the happier we feel" (Psychology Today).

So, today is March 20 and I have been thinking about the brain and happiness and purpose and vision and flow in an intentional way for about six months now.

And suddenly, because of school shootings (another this morning in Maryland), the world is starting to notice that our students are unhappy. And scared. And lonely. And being mean as crud to each other. Welcome to what teachers and parents and students already know.

For me, I think I'm on the brink of finding a solution. And it has everything to do with the way the Creator made our brains.

First, they gotta have vision.

beauty

normally, i have a thousand words.

i've used lots of them in the last few days so my brain might have turned into oatmeal in the last half hour.

here's the short  list:

a. Amazing police officers stopped by our house on Saturday morning and there is no doubt they were led here-- they were looking  for a crib for a family in need. A family whose baby needed a safe bed to sleep in. Suddenly, the crib I haven't been able to let go of or even talk about letting go of was set free from my heart. I'll write more about this later.

b. Their story, and the story about Ben's crib, kinda went viral. Because people want to hear stories with happy endings. Police officers with gigantic hearts, truly taking care of our community-- defending us, protecting the littlest ones of us. Yes, yes, yes.

c. A bunch of women I have never met sang out, "Me, too! Me, too!! My heart has loved a tiny one who outran me to the Father!!" There's so much comfort in the company of this sorority. We'll see them again! We will!! Rejoice!!

d. I've met a bunch of  journalists who want to report goodness!!! These guys want to proclaim HAPPY and HOPE. Channel 2, Fox 5 Atlanta, Channel 11. They're looking for JOY.

e. I'm reading Shawn Bolz's Translating God. Holy smokes, YES.

f. God has more for us than we could ever know.

g. He's good.

sometimes...

and it’s like we’re living

on the wrong side of a “what if” scenario—

the part of the movie

that would have happened if the main guy

had made a bad decision.

memories of you float across

a quiet, empty part of my heart,

tiny fragments of the beginning of a life

not filled out

unfinished pages from a coloring book

clothes washed only once, then folded and put away.

there is a bag in the top of the closet

and a box of ashes in the armoire

and all the words have been said—

how many times and ways can I rearrange them

when they all just spell

sorrow?

ache

and Oh God, help.

sometimes

it just rains.

shs

When you don't get what you want...

You are my portion, O Lord;

I have promised to obey your words.

Psalm 119:57

So here is what I have been struggling with-- and when I say "struggling," you should imagine me wrestling with a giant beast, trying my best to pin it to the ground and make it stay.

Desire. Hope. Things wanted. Hope deferred. Longings unfulfilled.

Don't worry-- my intention is not to depress. I write with a kind of joy that I can't say I've experienced before. It's a joy that has begun to settle into my spirit, the way feathers from a broken pillow might drift down over the floor-- pieces so light and small, but ultimately covering the place.

Here's the question I've been asking a long time-- it's the thing I've been struggling with: what happens when you don't get what you want?

I think that, so often in the Body of Christ, we insist on calling hope and faith and "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" a promise of what we want to have, what we long for.

How do we continue to believe the Lord for His promises when He doesn't seem to hear that one cry of your heart-- for a husband, for a child, for whatever...? We tell the world that if you just believe God for something, He will provide it in His time, and we wait quietly hoping that it's true, silently willing ourselves not to become bitter or angry with God for not showing up in the way or timing that we're expecting or hoping for.

But what about when it just doesn't happen? Do we give up? Do we throw in the towel because the time stamp on that hope or desire is about to expire? Do we decide to come up with another dream?

In a word... kinda.

Here's what I mean: I'm 41. I've held one beautiful, stillborn son in my arms, and experienced an early (9 week) miscarriage on Halloween, of all days. We have continued to hope and try for pregnancy, but it looks like it might not happen. I won't lie-- having a baby, raising a little one, has been a deep desire of my heart. The loss of two little ones has broken my heart, and it has affected the way I see and understand things. But I have a choice about how I process this.

The whole thing is complicated.

I told my students that there are three ways I got through and continue to get through the death of my baby son: my faith in my God, my relationship with my husband and our community, and writing. But there's a huge key to the first part: worship. 

Here's why: when I go before the Lord in worship, I am dragging my focus back toward Him. I'm looking Him full in the face, and this thing happens when you look Him full in the face: all you can see is Him. He fills the screen. I sort of see Him putting His hands on either side of my face, leaning toward me with eyes full of the most intense and beautiful love and concern, and fixing them on mine. And He just looks at me. And He is my closest, most precious friend. And He understands every pang of grief and He understands all of my frustrations and He knows the whole story that I could never begin to grasp, and suddenly I remember why I'm even alive.

To know Him. To tell everyone I know about Him. To worship Him. To enjoy Him. To tell everyone I know that He is merciful. That He is kind. That He never abandons us. That this life is simply a through-path to eternity. That the end, here, is not the end: it's the beginning. This life on earth is prologue. Who hangs out on the prologue?

And it's not about being Republican or conservative or any of the trash we find for our hands to get mixed up in on earth-- it's not about being exclusive or inclusive or any of the things we get so distracted by, those things that we use to distract others from just this:

His beauty.

I long for a baby. But it's not what I was created for.

I love teaching students and laughing with them. But it's not what I was created for.

I love my husband and cannot imagine my life without him. But he isn't what I was created for.

I love my family and friends-- but they are not why I exist.

First, I exist for Him.

Then I exist to tell everyone that Jesus Christ is the way to Him.

I exist to know the depth of His love, the sureness of His friendship, the perfection of His plan, and to share it. To talk about it. To talk about His goodness and to sing about it and to write about it. To shine a light into dark places and proclaim that Jesus is good and that He is the hope of life.

Because that is the hope that was set before the people on that list in Hebrews.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been           promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.

Jesus. 

So many times, we live our lives wishing for things only to miss what is right in front of us.

For me, my mind has been changing over these last years. I always thought I would have babies. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't. I didn't prepare myself for the possibility that I wouldn't. I just sort of knew that at the right time, it would happen.

I had no contingency for "just in case" because...well... just because. I mean, seriously, what kind of "contingency" plan can there be for hope deferred?

What it has looked like is a sort of bowing in my heart. Grabbing that desire-- that panic that rises at the first sign of my period arriving every month-- and feeling it. Not ignoring it. Feeling the grief of waiting again. Feeling the grief of loss all over again. Disappointment. 

But the emotion that tags along with that grief is anger, and that's when I have to get up and look that thing right in the face and say NO. That's when I have to start singing. That's when I have to remind my soul of why it is here, why the Lord said "YES" at the moment of my conception. I was created to bless His name.

Everything else is extra. 

And every single month, the grief grows a bit smaller, and my faith increases that much more.

Someone asked me, "But how?"

Honestly-- music. Listening to worship music. Singing to Him. Being careful who I talk with about the dreams in my heart-- some friends mean well but do not help at all. Meditating on His goodness. His word.

But how?

Here's your assignment:

1. When you feel the grief of loss and disappointment rising up (because it rises up, doesn't it? Like a really big wave, and you see it coming and you brace yourself for it, but it knocks you down anyway. Sometimes you don't see it coming, but it hits like that, too) allow yourself to feel it if you need to. Cry, write, call a friend who will cry with you and not preach to you about faith or desire or how many people "wish they had what you have" (we all have those friends...we've all been that friend... but after a while, even with the most amazing friends, this becomes a solitary path-- one you have to work through on your own). Don't ignore the sadness-- it's real, and God has created you with the capacity to feel deeply and widely and with great strength.

2. Then think of this: He's in it with us. He's with us. Ultimately, our friends will fail us, our family won't be able to think of anything comforting, our husbands will be out of words (because they're walking this path, too). In the end, it's just you and Jesus. 

3. Give up on trying to figure out why. I've battled this point since the moment I heard that Ben was dead. Did God just think I would be a bad mother (did He think you'd be a bad wife? Is that why you're single?)(by the way, the answer to those questions is "Seriously? Have you seen some of the idiots who reproduce and marry?")? Only God has the answers-- He is sovereign, and He's a good Parent-- He knows what we can understand and what we cannot possibly understand. We live in a fallen world where the sun shines on the good and the evil. We live in a place where we are not exempt from sadness. The difference for those of us in Christ? We are never alone in it. We are not abandoned to it. We understand something else-- we might not understand why bad stuff happens, but we know that we are never alone. 

But we feel alone until we lift our eyes and look at Him.

4. Do something. Sing. It doesn't matter what it sounds like-- He dances over us with singing, no matter how it sounds coming out. When I begin to sing, I feel my whole focus shift. When I begin to truly think about the lyrics I am singing, suddenly I find my vision lifted-- when I begin to worship the Lord, my enemy flees. When I begin to meditate on the goodness of the Lord, it seems like everything else that wants my attention-- my grief, my despair-- falls away. 

Do you paint? Do you run? Do you create anything with your hands? Can you think of a way to do it "as unto the Lord"? Can you do it while worship music is playing in your ears? Meditate on the beauty of the Lord and do something tangible while you're doing it. If you let Him distract you with His goodness, He will begin to fill you with the wisdom we're crying out for. Peaceful understanding that passes all other understanding. 

There are so many other parts to this whole thing, of course, but these are some of the steps He has been walking me through. 

So what happens when we don't get what we want? How do we cope with disappointment and longings left unfulfilled? I've been discovering that these aren't questions that have easy answers, but that they are the gates some of us walk through to greater depths of intimacy and friendship with Jesus Christ.

Because here's the bottom line: no matter what longings we're left with on this earth, He has accomplished the deepest desire of all of our hearts-- He has given us His Spirit, His Son, Himself. And that is no small thing, dear friends. That is no small thing. It is the only thing. 

And worshiping Him brings my soul back up into that truth, out of the depths of grief, every time.

Because no matter what I long for on earth, He is my portion. He is my great inheritance. He is why I live. 

Songs for lifting our vision higher, for reminding our souls about the beauty of the King we were created to know (I'm not that all concerned about the videos-- it's just the music):

I Gotta Get Closer

How Great is Our God

I Have to Believe

Worth It All

When I think about the Lord

Holy Visitation 

Reason To Sing

Jesus, You're more than a Friend

Desert Song

Gotta Tell Somebody

Choose to Fly

Healing is in Your Hands

More than ever

Perfect Peace