Category: Thoughts from Life

Posted in Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Scripture

The Choice

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, Your consolations delight my soul. Psalm 94:19 (NASB)

This was the first verse on my mind this morning. I felt the anxiety tighten its band around me, even though I had no idea where it was coming from or what specific thing was causing it. So, I breathed this verse and asked the Lord to whisper to me the truths of His consolations. The things I sometimes don’t automatically remember when I’m in the middle of anxiety.

When the anxiety hits, instead of the consolations I usually see the circumstances. And never the good parts, no matter how numerous they might be. I only see the negative parts of our circumstances. The struggles. The discouragements. The places where we are lacking. I know this shouldn’t be my focus, but it can be hard to redirect. To actually enumerate the consolations of our amazing, victorious, loving God.

When I look in Scripture, I see many who were stuck in their circumstances. Abraham in the waiting. Jacob in his bondage to Laban. Joseph in slavery and prison. David in being pursued, first by Saul, then by one challenge after another. The Israelites in slavery and exile. The prophets in abuse and rejection of the people. And on and on and on.

But what I don’t see is evidence of rejection by God. They might have felt forsaken and abandoned by God, forgotten in their mire. But they weren’t. They just needed a different perspective.

This is what the psalmist recognized when penning the words of Psalm 94. Perspective was everything, and that perspective revolved around choosing to remember and receive God’s consolations. The truth about God.

That’s where I am today. The specific circumstances that weigh down on my heart and mind change through the years. But they are always there, in one form or another. They impact my heart, my mind, and even my health. They have wounded my husband and our children. We have often felt completely powerless to change them or to even protect our children.

Yet God is calling me to remember His consolations, no matter what today’s circumstances are. He’s calling me to remember who He is. His goodness. His truth. His purposes. His love. Circumstances may or may not reflect those things in the moment. But, He is above circumstances, and circumstances don’t change Truth.

The problem is not with the reality of God. The problem lies in the choice before me today. Before all of us in the throes of a struggle. Will we choose His consolations?

It’s hard work, and it’s easy to grow weary. But today I will choose His consolations.

I can’t speak for tomorrow or the next day, only for today. And today I will choose and pray that they really do delight this anxious soul.

Posted in Thoughts from Life

My View

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I can see irises through my office window.

When we moved here, I transplanted just over a dozen of my iris bulbs. At our previous home, they were planted in a nice little circle around a large oak in the front yard. The new home also had a spot in the front yard where flowers could easily be planted around a tree, and that tree happened to be right outside the office window. Perfect location!

The catch was that the bulbs didn’t bloom. I didn’t really expect blooms the first year after we moved, one full year after transplanting, although I knew it was possible. But I did kind of expect them the second year. So, I was disappointed when there were no blooms at all. The third year, when I began seeing irises elsewhere around the community, I went out to check my own. Just leaves. Not even a sign of stalks growing.

Less than two weeks later, I suddenly had buds on three of plants! Then buds showed up on two more plants! Although it was still fewer than half of the transplanted bulbs, those five began to produce abundantly, providing wave after wave of beauty.

And the best part was that I could see them from my window. Every time I got up from my desk or passed through the room, the irises were there to make me smile.

It sounds perfect, doesn’t it? A beautiful view from my window! But what if I told you it was incomplete?

You see, only four of the five sets of blooms can be seen from my window. The fifth one is behind the tree.

But there’s more. My fledgling hydrangea bush is off to one side of the porch, out of sight from the window. It is just starting to produce color, pink this year instead of the blue it boasted when we bought it last year. I have to make sure to step outside if I want to enjoy the new growth. My Norfolk pine, the one bought years ago as a small living Christmas tree for our bedroom, comes inside during the cold winter months. During that season, I can easily see it on its high perch, safe and sound from cat attacks. But as soon as the overnight temperatures rise enough each spring, I move the large pot to a spot right beside the front door where it will be able to enjoy the humid warmth and get the right amount of sunlight. It sits just out of sight between the office window and the front door, along with the potted blueberry and elderberry bushes lined up on either side of it.

I’m honestly horrible at growing things, and more plants die at my hand than survive. But these are growing, and it’s delightful to see them. But in order to do so, I have to actually step outside. I can’t enjoy their beauty through the window like I can most of the irises.

Oh, and have I mentioned the peach trees? This is their first year to be mature enough to produce, and they are covered in maturing peaches. Not only can I not see them from the window, there is also no way to smell them from inside. The peach smell has been glorious from the moment those beautiful buds first began to swell and produce fruit! I just have to step outside the door to see and smell and enjoy.

Life is beautiful in the same way, isn’t it? God gives us so much to see from right where we are. It’s glorious and it’s nourishing. But do we catch the fact that it’s also incomplete?

God has given us the incredibly nourishment of our immediate families, our work and social spaces, and our church home. There is so much to see and smell and taste and touch in those spaces. It can be so very nourishing and powerful.

But as beautiful as life is in the immediate spaces God has created for us, if we don’t look further, we’ll miss the fuller and more powerful beauty. If we don’t step out of our comfortable spaces into the wider world, we’ll lack an understanding of how God creates beauty in the most unexpected ways. We’ll miss the smells and sights and visions of His expansive kingdom. We’ll miss the understanding that there is beauty beyond our wildest imaginations, beauty that will be fully revealed when we cross the boundary between temporary and eternal.

My view from my office window is precious and nourishing. But stepping into my yard gives me much more. Will we step out and see the greater Kingdom beauty that exists all around us?

Posted in Thoughts from Life

Not Today, Please

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Lately, I’ve been processing through some things I wrote years ago but never published. At the time, I was putting pressure on myself to organize my blog just so, taking time to design and maintain themes. And a lot of what I was writing either didn’t fit into the themes or took too much effort to design just right. So, it just got stored, waiting for…someday.

But there’s also another category of writing from those years. Thoughts that came from a place of deep struggle. Pain. Darkness, even. I don’t specifically remember writing the words, but I do remember never intending to publish any of that content. It felt too raw. I needed to process my feelings, but I did not believe I was free to show that side of myself to other people.

I know, and have always known, that we encourage others by sharing it all. Not just the good or nourishing. Not just the wrapped-up-in-a-pretty-package lessons after they have been learned. But the struggle, too. The hurt. The ugly. But it takes a lot to actually be the one to encourage that way. Not just the freedom of courage, but freedom in many other areas as well.

Today I am in a very different place with a new set of struggles but also a new fount of freedom. And today I found one of those posts that I never meant to publish. I have no idea what was happening at the time, but I know it’s not the only time I felt this way. Nor is is the most recent time I’ve felt that way. So, today, I’m going to do what I never intended to do. I’m going to take advantage of where I am right now and share it. And if you have ever felt this way, or even feel this way more often than not, I hope that today you can know you are not alone.

I’m just not feeling it today.

It’s one of those days when actually getting out of bed was a hard-won victory. One that took every ounce of the will power I had to accomplish anything. Real work, real productivity, real living all take too much effort. It would be so much easier to curl up with a book or lose myself in the mindlessness of social media. To just play. Goof off. Push it all aside. Or better yet, just hide completely. Be invisible.

To push aside the hurt of feeling unwanted – rejected, even – in the very thing that I thought was actually going well.
To walk away from the overwhelming feeling of being behind in everything.
To stop trying to succeed when at every turn I feel like I’m failing.

It would be so much easier.

And yet, I can’t. So, I wish I could write a poem like my precious daughter does. To get it all out in bare honesty. But that’s not part of who I am. I have to find my own way. Figure out my own release. Work this out in the way God created me to do so.

So, here I am. Tapping it out. Vaguely, yet openly. Not naming the hurt, yet seeing it in every word. Not exploring the sense of failure, but trying to recognize the truth behind the feeling. Not listing all that leaves me feeling overwhelmed, yet acknowledging the tension in my neck. My shoulders. My back. My head. And seeking that planner so I can create tangible to-dos to help focus my energy and relieve the pressure.

I’m not feeling it. But I’m going to do it. I’m going to dive into the work day. I’m going to accomplish tangible tasks. I’m going to choose progress, even when I’d rather curl up and hide.

And with that decision alone, I feel better.

Maybe I can do today after all.

Posted in Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Prayer

Never to Return

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I occasionally jot down writing ideas, or post starters, to come back to later. Sometimes I come back to them and have no clue what my notes mean, so they end up being ignored or discarded. Other times, the memory of what I was thinking comes flooding back with even greater clarity than when I first had the thoughts. The writing flows in a way it never would have had I written about it back then.

Still other times, though, the post starters feel almost prophetic. It’s in those times that I truly see how the Holy Spirit works in our hearts and minds to not only grow us but to prepare us for challenges that lie ahead.

I recently revisited one such post starter for about the third time. It’s over seven years old, but the implications are profoundly appropriate for right now. Here’s part of what I wrote:

Sometimes, normal will never return. It’s a new normal.

Restoration never involves going back. It involves going forward and realizing that the only constant is Christ Himself. Not normalcy.

I’d jotted down these thoughts as we watched two different dear friends process through losing their spouses. The circumstances and ages of the friends were very different, but the reality was the same: their lives could never go back to what they had previously considered to be normal. It wasn’t possible.

The realization led me to recognize my own struggle with some changes our family had made a couple of years before. We’d made such changes many times before, but this particular time, it was harder to figure out how to make the adjustment. There were just too many differences. We had tried for so long to settle back into normalcy. But, it always failed. Only when we realized that we needed to start from scratch were we able to make some sense of the changes. And in the experience of processing through all of this, we learned what it meant to be able to rediscover routine and normalcy again, even when everything had changed.

Who knew that a global pandemic would require us to fall back on that skill again years later? That was actually the second time I revisited this thought and fleshed it out a bit more. But I still wasn’t ready to put it out there. Everything felt very raw, and I struggled with how I was processing any of it.

And now, as I revisit this thought yet again, my family is in another stage of transition. Long, drawn-out transition that prevents settling into a “new normal.” (I grew to greatly dislike that phrase during Covid, and it’s not much happier now.) Through it all, I’m realizing that we haven’t really hit a “normal” for our family in a long, long time. That forces me back to the last part of my original thought, the one about our only constant being Christ Himself, not normalcy.

That’s hitting me hard.

What if I were to redirect my thoughts and focus on something other than normalcy? What if I were to focus instead on restoration? On truly letting Christ be my constant instead of always seeking after normal?

We often think of restoration as returning something to its former glory, but that’s never the case. We can’t accomplish that because there will always be a newness. Even if the restored treasure looks the same, the materials are always new. They are always bound to the time in which they were restored, no matter what style they may represent. It’s never a return. It’s always a newness.

That’s where we are right now. We’ll never return to “normal.” But, we can move into beautiful restoration. We can move into a newness of life. Of course, that’s only possible when we embrace the Author of life Himself. After all, He is the only constant. The only thing that ever remains the same, no matter the changes. The only One who can never be restored because He can never be damaged. Never changed. Never warped. He is. Continuously and always. He restores us, constantly remaking us into the image He intended from the very beginning. Were we to cling to our sense of normal, we would miss the restoration. We would never succeed in becoming what we were intended to be because our normal is warped. Incomplete. Corrupted. He is bringing us into the incorruptible, but that means that we must go through the refining.

Thinking of this, I realize I don’t want my old normal back. I don’t want to settle for a new normal, either. Instead, I want restoration. It’s a process that will continue until I see my God and Savior face to face, and that’s okay. That means that this “new normal” is temporary as the restoration continues.

May I walk faithfully through it, trusting His work all the way and never hungering to return.

Because what lies ahead is so much better.

Posted in Thoughts from Life

The Goodness of Messy

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

If you’ve processed through any advice from time management gurus, you’ve probably heard about things like routines, rhythms, and habit stacking.

For the record, I love all of those. Good routines and rhythms, built around a reliable structure, breathe life into my ability to process each day. Without those, I feel more than a little lost. In times of life when I lack that solid structure and the ability to build my rhythms, it takes a lot of effort to avoid wasting my day. And usually I spend so much energy trying to figure out how to handle each day that I don’t have a whole lot of energy left for actually doing the things I determine need to be done.

So, yes, I’m a huge support of structure, habits, rhythms, and routines. But I also recognize how easily they can backfire!

Easter Sunday was the picture of backfiring habit-stacking and rhythms.

Frequently on Easter Sunday we have a sunrise service, which means that our rhythm is completely off anyway. This year, for a variety of reasons, we didn’t have that service. So, we had our normal rhythm with one exception: our traditional enjoyment of caramel pecan sticky buns on Easter morning.

The sticky buns are super easy to make in advance, which makes them easy to add into Easter morning prep. And I thought this year would be even easier without having to figure out timing around the sunrise service.

And I was right on one count. Getting the sticky buns ready was still easy. All I had to do was pull the prepared buns out of the fridge when I first got up and was prepping coffee and Choffy. My hubby turned on the oven as he headed to the treadmill, then I popped them into the oven when it was my turn to head to the treadmill. When I was done, I rotated them so they’d cook evenly, then he got them out of the oven while I was in the shower.

Easy, right?

Yes…but also no. Because suddenly all of my rhythms and habit stacking were off.

Had I been alert and awake, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But I was sleepy. Tired. And not feeling my best because of allergies. So, the brain just wasn’t firing quite right. And when that happens, I fall heavily back on that habit-stacking approach to the morning. I do this, then this, then that, almost mechanically.

But this particular morning, I added in some things. It was all fine until I went to rotate the sticky buns and had to do some quick problem-solving because the caramel was overflowing the pans. After that, I was thrown off. I got to my bedroom and forgot my post-treadmill stretches. Then I missed another step. And another. All because my habit-stacking was thrown off and my brain just wasn’t keeping up.

So, what’s my point here? To give up on the time management guru advice? No, not really. I still love having structure and habits. I still believe in rhythms and routines.

But, Easter Sunday was a reminder that I’m not a machine. Instead, I’m a living, breathing, flexible human being who was designed to respond and feel. Because of that, sometimes the best keep-me-on-track tricks fail. They are mechanics. I am alive.

Being alive makes life messy. It means that even when there seems to be a solution that perfectly fits our personalities, even that solution doesn’t always work. Sometimes things go wonky just because life is an experience.

And guess what? That is good! The mess is good. The wonkiness is good. The things that go a little haywire are good. They might not feel good in the moment, but they serve as a reminder of goodness. A reminder that we are not machines but are living, breathing human beings. That we are unique.

As a perfectionist, that can be hard for me to remember in the moment. Oddly enough, though, that was the biggest blessing on Easter Sunday. I recognized this reality right in the middle of everything going wonky. It made me feel alive, even in the moment. (Kind of appropriate for Easter, huh?)

Is life messy for you right now? Either in small moments or just in an all around immersion in mess? I know you need to get out of the mess. To deal with it. To get your structure back and recapture the benefits of the practices those time management gurus teach us.

In the meantime, though, remember that there is goodness in this mess. That you can be encouraged by it. That it serves to remind you that you are alive!

Posted in Thoughts from Kids, Thoughts from Life, Thoughts from Others

Beautiful Ages

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

A picture popped up in my Facebook memories. One of my all-time favorites, actually. It pops up every year and I think I reshare it every year, even though it’s now well over a decade old.

The setting is a small town where we used to live. We lived on one edge of town and the post office was at the other end, but the town was small enough that even our littlest could make the trek with us.

On this particular spring day, he didn’t have to. His sisters decided that they wanted to give him and our life-sized stuffed emperor penguin Napoleon a ride in our son’s beloved little red wagon.

In the picture, my precious girls, aged 9 and 7 at the time, face away from the camera, one pulling the wagon and one pushing. (The joint effort wasn’t necessary, but that’s where they wanted to be.) Their 4-year-old brother sits in the wagon facing the camera, proudly holding Napoleon and grinning from ear to ear.

The picture is a beautiful representation of those days. My children fought and argued like any siblings, but they also adored each other. And the girls absolutely loved doing things for their brother. The image didn’t capture a rare sweet moment like some pictures do. Instead, it captured that season of our family’s life. Each year it pops back up in my Facebook feed and reminds me of the beauty of that season.

And yes, some days I miss it. It was not always easy. It was not always glorious, and there were days I wanted to move forward or move on or just be in a different place. But it was still good, and I loved my children being that age.

Here’s the thing, though. I love my children now, too. They are grown. That littlest one in the wagon is now the tallest and is joining his sisters in the adventure of adulthood.

All three of my children have hit some really, really hard days, and my heart grieves the pain they’ve had to journey through. But even though I wish I could protect them from the pain, I still cherish what they’ve learned to make them who they are today. And even though I sometimes miss the baby days or the wagon-pulling days or the lap-snuggling days or the read aloud on the couch days, I wouldn’t give up the grown-up days I’m enjoying now just to go back to the old times.

They are all beautiful ages.

Interestingly, there are some other posts that have popped up in my social media feeds that have also shared the glory and beauty of past ages. They are the posts that talk about how wonderful and beautiful childhood was for this generation or that. They accomplish this by declaring the current age to be ugly. They declare that children today will never be good enough or fulfilled enough or healthy enough or happy enough or whatever enough because they live in the wrong age.

Here’s the sad part about this perspective. It would be just like saying that my children are not good enough because they aren’t still 9, 7, and 4. They aren’t still pulling, pushing, and riding a little red wagon through a town they haven’t lived in for years.

This mindset declares that, because of things outside of their control, my children aren’t enough.

As parents, we tend to verbally mourn the loss of the “little” years without celebrating what we’ve gained in the “big” years.

As generations, we talk about how wonderful we had it when we were kids without celebrating the wonderful things that the new generation has that we didn’t.

Yes, I had a freedom to be outside and unrestricted. But I also lost connection with some potentially lifelong friends because I moved and they moved and we lost track of physical mailing addresses. My kids have more restrictions in some ways, but they have friends all around the globe that they interact with every single day.

They will never truly grasp the beauty of my childhood, but I will honestly never experience the beauty of theirs. And it’s okay. Good even. Because there are positives and negatives in every generation. There is beauty in every single age.

Infancy. Childhood. Teen years. Adulthood.

The 50s, the 80s, the 2020s.

Instead of bemoaning what is gone and belittling what is present, what if we were to extol the beauty of it all? What if we were to spend as much time exploring the good as slamming the bad?

We might just find that there’s a whole lot more beauty than we ever imagined possible. Yes, even today.

Posted in Thoughts from Life

5 Simple Steps

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Recently someone I knew recommended an article as “good” and “helpful.” It was on a topic of interest to me, discussing an area where I have been seeking to grow, so I went ahead and clicked the link. And I was immediately deflated and reminded why I don’t typically click such links.

Oh, the suggestions in it were accurate. They were all things you should do. But they were all the most basic suggestions imaginable. The obvious. The starting point. They weren’t suggestions for those who were actually struggling to find encouragement and guidance in the work itself.

Imagine it this way.

You are trying to give someone guidance on how to learn to cook, so you give them these five pointers:

  • Gain access to a kitchen.
  • Make sure the kitchen is stocked well with pots, pans, sturdy cooking utensils, and a good set of knives.
  • Always have salt and pepper on hand, and consider a few additional spices.
  • Find a recipe you want to prepare and go grocery shopping.
  • Make sure you set out all of your ingredients and supplies before starting to cook.

All of those tips are accurate, right? But, do they really teach someone to cook? Even if you were to add a paragraph under each point, ensuring more clarity about what it meant to be “stocked well” or what to pay attention to when seeking recipes, there is still so much lacking. This doesn’t teach someone how to cook. At all. In fact, an individual who had never cooked before would probably be headed for disaster if this were their sole source of encouragement and instruction.

And yet, this is what we have to offer, not just for beginners but also for those veterans who find themselves stuck and in need of help. Five quick tips to ensure success in parenting, marriage, other relationships, business, ministry, homeschooling, political engagement, job hunting, navigating menopause, battling mental health…you name it. These are the suggestions handed down by the people who are successful. The people who have “made it.”

People are floundering because of it. They are discouraged and frustrated. They feel like failures because they’ve tried all the best tips and still can’t seem to figure things out. They have believed the lie that they can never be successful simply because they can’t take these five simple tips handed out by the “experts” and produce a five-star meal.

I’ve been guilty of writing these articles just to produce content. But I’ve also been on the side of frustration and failure when the articles do nothing to really help me figure out solutions.

So, what is the solution?

Relationship. Community. Real hands-in-the-dirt work and partnership.

You see, the problem with the cooking suggestions is not that the guidance is wrong. It is instead that we have decided to give people a witty 400-800 word article instead of instruction and aid. We have chosen to keep our distance and offer our brilliant, simple points rather than walk through learning with someone. Because if we were to do that, we know we would inevitably hit upon some uncomfortable truths.

We’d see that not everyone has what we had when we were learning the same lessons. Some people are coming from very different circumstances. Others have different strengths and talents. Different skills. Different manners of thinking and approaching life.

And that makes training messy. It means that it’s not a one-size fits-all proposition. And it means that sometimes we have to admit we don’t know all of the answers. It means that we have to recognize our own need to keep learning. We haven’t actually “made it” after all.

We don’t like to be put in that position. The 5 Simple Steps approach is so much easier.

And never successful.

We have so much more to give. Will we make the effort to build the relationships and invest the time necessary to give it?

Posted in Meditations & Meanderings, Perspective, Thoughts from Life

Sharing the Good…AND the Bad

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Some days I look around and feel like everything is bad news. The reports of depression and anxiety overwhelm me the most. It’s like an epidemic, and I despise it.

It’s especially disheartening because of how many teens and young adults are buried under the weight of anxiety and depression. The number of moms who can identify with watching their children suffer is devastating.

But we don’t want to talk about the suffering. In fact, we often speak badly of those who actually share their struggles while glorifying those who never speak a negative word, no matter their suffering. I recall when one such man passed away from cancer, much was made of the fact that he never spoke of his own pain and suffering but was always quick to pour life and joy into other people. Even when he was asked about himself, he deflected and poured positivity into others.

Don’t get me wrong, this particular man was amazing and he deserved every good word spoken about him.

But I also remember feeling the weight of condemnation pour over me because, just a few hours before, I had been asked a question about how things were going and I answered honestly. We were struggling, and I knew this person would understand. And pray. And support. So, I answered instead of deflecting. I was raw instead of oozing positivity.

But it suddenly seemed like that had been the completely wrong response.

And boom. Instead of being encouraged because I was able to share my struggle with someone who understood, I was once again buried in the epidemic of anxiety and depression.

So, what’s the answer?

Should we share and try to draw strength from one another? Or are we just dragging each other down when we share our struggles? Should we refuse to say anything negative or admit to any struggle just so we can make sure that others only see positive? Or are we actually causing more grief and harm by making one another feel guilty for honestly sharing our struggles?

I recently had an epiphany about all of this after a fellow mom shared with me the struggle that mornings were with her depressed teen. The conversation returned to me as I was having a hard time getting started myself the next morning. I was suddenly aware and cognizant of why MY mornings had been so bad recently.

Because someone else shared, I saw myself.

Because someone else was honest, I became aware.

Because someone else didn’t sugarcoat, I gained understanding.

Not condemnation. Not a beat-down for not being enough. But a realization of where I was. Reality. Clarity. Honesty.

It didn’t solve my problem. But it did move me forward. It made me see a purpose in my actions throughout the day. It provided a minuscule boost to my tiny allotment of will power. All because someone else shared a struggle instead of oozing positivity and denying the negative.

There’s a time and a place for the good. A time to radiate joy and strength and positive. A time to say, “I’m going to focus on your beauty rather than my hurts. I’m going to nourish you and allow that to comfort me in the process.” In fact, this should be our priority. It should be our aim and goal.

But there’s also a time to be real. Honest. Raw, even. A time to let others know that we’re not okay. That the suffering is getting to us.

Because in that honesty, we reveal that we’re human. We need. We don’t always handle hurt with grace and joy. Sometimes we just hurt. Others around us need to know this. They need to know that they aren’t condemned because they feel their pain and suffering. They’re not less-than because they can’t radiate joy all the time.

They need to know they’re not alone. They need to be awakened to realizations of, “Oh! That’s how I feel! It’s real! It’s legitimate! And maybe…just maybe, it’s solvable.

We need to share the good. Without a doubt. But we also need to share the struggles. The pain. The bad. Because in doing such, we just might find that we save a life simply by letting someone else know they’re not condemned. They’re not alone. They’re not done for.

They’re just real.

Posted in Faith Nuggets, Thoughts from Life

On Puzzles and Noticing

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

I love puzzles. Fortunately for me, I also have a daughter who enjoys puzzles, maybe even more than I do! Over the years, we’ve loved sitting down to puzzles together, working on them for Sabbath rest or in stolen moments here and there.

The summer before she headed off to college, we started a rather complex puzzle. With 1500 pieces, it wasn’t an abnormally sized puzzle for us. We frequently tackle 1000-piece puzzles without a second thought, and a 500-piece puzzle isn’t even really a challenge at all. So, there wasn’t anything extraordinary about this 1500-piece puzzle in its size.

It was the image itself that caused us to wonder about our sanity as we dove in. This particular puzzle was constellations. A dark background covered in tiny words and dots and details. Several times I wondered if my eyes weren’t just a bit too old for this heavily detailed puzzle.

We started the puzzled over the summer. Then my daughter headed off to college. I tackled a couple of things here and there — parts that I knew wouldn’t be too challenging because I could see the patterns easily. But I didn’t make a lot of progress.

My daughter came home for Christmas, and we decided to spend some time puzzling. That first day back on the “job” I noticed something I had never seen before, even after months of having the puzzle out. I noticed blue lines and patterns connecting the stars in the middle of the puzzle. Images. Patterns. Designs with coherent flow.

I had expected the center to be almost impossible to figure out systematically because of the teeny tiny dots and numbers. But what I found was a series of patterns that would make the puzzle much more easy to solve. Connection points. Anchors.

These had been there all along, I just hadn’t noticed them.

Oddly enough, I’d just finished a book a few days before that talked about noticing. Sitting patiently with art or other aspects of beauty to observe and gain awareness that a glance — or even a long look — will never provide. The idea of sitting in front of a single painting for minutes, much less hours, seems so very hard to me. And yet, I’ve caught myself lingering at times before a snippet of beauty only to find that I could hardly tear myself away. So much to see and take in that a lifetime couldn’t possibly be enough!

I’ve long argued that we need to approach Scripture this way as well. Sitting with it, reading and rereading it, discovering what we can’t see quickly. This approach was pressed into my heart and mind by a college class. Our professor would hand us a passage and have us list all of our observations. When we felt we’d gleaned all we possibly could, he would tell us to go and do it again. We’d moan and groan, thinking there was nothing else to be seen. We’d get ornery and list blatantly obvious, seemingly ridiculous details, only to discover that those details would awaken us to a whole list of things we’d missed before.

In recent years, this concept of lingering and observing that once was as natural as breathing has become foreign to me. In some ways, I’ve been afraid to linger because lingering isn’t always happy. Sometimes it’s simply overwhelming, producing unexplained emotions that leave me with more questions than answers. Lingering can mean dealing with painful things. Things that I can’t fix. Things that only hurt.

Little observances have been awakening my heart. A lakeside sunrise so incredibly beautiful that I couldn’t bear to pull my eyes away. A pattern than stirred thoughts and made me want to create despite the fact that art is not in any way a gifting of mine. A puzzle that seemed so challenging because of all of its apparent sameness, only to reveal itself to be full of patterns and nuances that, once discovered, made it almost easy to complete.

Noticing stirs thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness stirs emotions. Emotions stir connection. And connection breathes life back into parts of me that have been, at best, dormant and, at worst, dead.

Fortunately for me, I serve a Lord, Savior, and Master who not only awakens the dormant but can actually bring the dead back to life.

Sometimes with something as simple as a puzzle.

Posted in Thoughts from Life, What I Do

Day Two

Posted on by Ann B. Hibbard

Day One was a good day. Well, for writing at least.

All of my timing worked out. Even with a slightly sluggish start to the morning, I got in my exercise, morning devotional reading, and school with my son and still had time to spare before I needed to clock into work.

So, I sat down to a blank screen and had just over 1000 words written before it was time to quit. For the first time in a while, the ideas and the words came together to flow into productivity.

On the one hand, that’s a great thing. Day One success can be so helpful to get up and do Day Two. Then Day Three. Making it a habit.

But, Day One success can also be a struggle.

The very next morning, I procrastinated for 30 minutes. I wrote some reviews because that was easy and safe. I sent a couple of check-in chats on Marco Polo. I cleared my inbox.

Why?

Because I was scared to sit down to another blank screen and not have Day Two go like Day One did. On Day One, I had ideas before I ever sat down. On Day Two, I was going to have to sit down first and see if the ideas came to me.

That’s just plain intimidating.

And for over half an hour, I let that fear and intimidation keep me from even trying. I let it eat away at the time I had available to write. I let it distract me.

But I finally made it. I started tapping away at the keyboard, and the very experience of the morning gave me something to write about. I didn’t have as much time to write because of all the time I wasted. I wouldn’t make it to 1000 words. I probably wouldn’t even make half that. But I showed up, and that very act showed me that I actually did have something to say.

Here’s the deal, though. On Day Three — or Day Twelve or Day One Hundred and Fifty-Seven — I might actually sit down to a blank screen and have…nothing. At some point, my fears will become reality.

But I’m also realizing something else. On those days I’ll still have something to do. I’ll have a folder of rough drafts ready to be edited. I’ll have a folder of completed drafts ready to be published. I’ll have something to work with. Why? Because I sat down on Day One and turned my thoughts into typed words. I sat down on Day Two and conquered my intimidation.

On Day Two, I confirmed the habit of doing it anyway. Of sitting down with the intention of working toward being a writer once again. This is a part of me that has been dormant for far too long. And because of that, I’ve been incomplete. I need this.

So, I’ll do it.

I’ll do it on the days when I have the ideas before I even sit down to the computer — and then enjoy seeing those ideas materialize into coherent content. I’ll do it on the days when I have the ideas but then can’t seem to get them out coherently. I’ll do it on the days when there are no ideas beforehand, but something comes to me because I make myself do it anyway.

I’ll do it on the days when there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. At all.

What have you allowed to slip? What have you not done because you’re not getting around to being yourself? What have you allowed intimidation to keep you from doing?

What can you do today to get started? To reinforce what you’ve started but are afraid to continue? To keep going even when you’ve hit a dry spell on something that’s been going so well? To grow and improve in something you’ve been doing diligently?

No matter the obstacles before you today…do it anyway.