Tag: growth

Before trouble comes “H.A.L.T” (on awareness)

I’m reading the book by Brennan Manning called, “The Wisdom of Tenderness”.

Here is a gem I read today on page 107 and that I found really potent.

Brennan Manning died last year, and he is probably best known for writing the Ragamuffin Gospel. He accumulated a lot of wisdom through life, but it didn’t come cheap. Poor choices, wrong turns, and hard lessons molded him into a person of great compassion and grace–a sage for the poor in spirit and those smart enough to listen. Many sought him out for his wisdom.

When Manning came into recovery as an alcoholic he learned a buzzword from AA (Alcoholics Anonymous). They use it as a way to create greater awareness in a person who is vulnerable to slipping back into alcohol abuse.

• They stay on the lookout for four qualities that make them susceptible to relapse and are encouraged to seek help when they identify them occurring in their life. Before they take a sip they look for the signs and call for backup.

halt

H.A.L.T.

H – Hungry (not just for food, but a longing in general)

A – Angry (or stressed, or frustrated)

L – Lonely (or rejected, or left out)

T – Tired (often tired from helping others or being otherwise overcommitted)

People in AA have to rely on each other to find support and avoid the demon booze. People in AA need to cultivate an awareness of their vulnerabilities to avoid a slide into dangerous, even life-threatening, behavior. But, don’t we all need help in the same sorts of ways? We engage in all sorts of bad habits from over eating, to binge tv watching, trolling on Facebook, eating a pint of ice cream out of the box, to watching or reading licentious content, to pill popping....or whatever…it’s probably very different for each person.

Sometimes we don’t even realize our feelings or how we are trying to soothe our selves.

Let’s develop the awareness to halt and seek help when we get run down, over-extended, or when we find ourselves feeling in some way hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. It can be the escape route from trouble, bad choices. It is awareness at the heart of any meaningful transformation or spiritual growth.

Will you be able to know to H.A.L.T. before trouble?

I’ll post other tidbits as I find them. Enjoy the book for yourself if you can. You can get it used for pocket change.

How-To: start any YEAR (or DAY) right: Do a Sharpening Ritual

I wanted to be more intensional about my mindset in 2015 and I created something for myself to do each morning and evening to super charge that. It’s a simple worksheet that takes only 3-7 minutes in the morning and in the evening. And you see results and improvement after just a few days.

It’s free, so you why not give it a try and see for yourself.

You can download it, distribute it, use it in groups, or for yourself.

Just print out a copy for each day, or keep a journal and use the worksheet as your guide.

Habits and rituals for re-centering on what matters are a huge boost to personal improvement on all levels (career, relational, emotional, physical, spiritual, etc). A format (or roadmap) makes it easy to start and execute, but most of all, easier to stick with it until it can transform your thoughts and actions.

If you think that you’d like the new year to get off to a great start or if you feel like you need a guide to get back on track, this is a great resource, I promise you. Simply, download it free, print it, and try it.  If you like it, let me know, or tell me what would improve it.

In a goodwill gesture and love and warm fuzzies, I am releasing these to you and the world under a Limited Creative Commons license. (CC). They are free to reproduce, use, and distribute with author attribution to me (Lisa DeLay).

xo

-Lisa

• The SHARPENING Ritual 
Learn more HERE

• The SHARPENING Ritual
(PRAYER-centered VERSION)

Learn more HERE

Sharpening

SharpeningPRAYER

on Waiting…

This Sunday marks the start of the season of Advent 2015.

The predominant theme of Advent is WAITING in expectation.
It’s a timeless theme.

stranded-new-york-workers-wait-patiently-in-a-long-line-to-use-a-phone-booth-to-call-home
(Before mobile phones, if a bus broke down you had to find a pay phone and wait your turn to call for rescue. These folks don’t seem too upset by it.)

 

Waiting makes up a big portion of our lives, doesn’t it?

Whether it’s waiting in line or in traffic or waiting for an occasion or certain situation–we do a lot of waiting.

For me, a focus on waiting pulls me out of the present moment to a moment that exists in theory. It involves hope or anxiety. Or both.

The prisoners I minister to have a life centered on waiting for their freedom. They routinely tell me that keeping busy is the best way to conquer the burden and stress of waiting.

 

But a closer interaction with the experience of waiting can unearth and reveal deeper spiritual longings that can both call us into a richer walk of faith and engender the growth needed to more fully surrender to God.

 

If we just stay busy we can miss the gifts that come only through waiting.

Because waiting is such a huge part of the human experience, it’s no wonder that Christianity has long interacted with this theme as a entry point into bigger spiritual conversations and concepts. It is through this struggle we gain growth and maturity in our walk of faith.

Patience is rarely, if ever, attained by any other means than practice.

Waiting is that practice.

Waiting on the Lord is a vibrant theme in Scriptures too, right?

Most of the stories in the Bible include the aspect of waiting. Abraham and Sarah (and many others) wait for offspring, David waits on the Lord for deliverance, the prophets wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled, Paul and the other apostles do a lot of waiting in prison, and in the season of Advent we acutely encounter Mary’s waiting for the Savior, Jesus. She is the vehicle God has chosen to birth the Prince of Peace. It’s a nine month process–on the heels of thousands of years of waiting for the Messiah.

This delivery involves a lot of anticipation and waiting.

And so too does most anything else of worth. These many stories echo our own pain and struggle.

I appreciate Mary’s expression of gratitude during her wait (a.k.a. The Magnificat-see the video below to hear “Mary’s Song” sung my John Michael Talbot). We can use her example to help us along.

Gratitude produces joy that makes waiting easier.

Waiting aptly exposes our traits of impatience, also. It works to refine us.

Henri Nouwen once wrote, “Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. ”

Rev Adele Ahlberg Calhoun recently wrote,

Waiting is how God gets at the idols of our heart. Waiting addresses the things we think we need besides God to be content: money, comfort, expedience, success or control.

TODAY’S NUGGET:

It’s a powerful lesson we find in Advent. Meditate on the longings of your heart and cultivate the seeds of advent there. Expectantly wait for God to fulfill his promises with a heart of trust and gratitude.

How-to MEASURE Maturity

(creative common photo)
(creative commons photo)

I used to think that people got better as they aged. They learned things and got more mature, and became better people.

As a kid, especially, I thought of how little I knew in comparison to my mom and dad, and other adults. I was changing and learning and growing in every way, every day–and I just supposed that growth and improvement were part of the deal in exchange for aging, and not being able to pull off wearing trendy clothes anymore and loose fitting skin.

Nope.

Now, of course, I realize that maturity has very little to do with time spent alive.

Hurts happen.

Wounds can fester.

People can grow bitter and nasty.

People can stay petty and insecure.

They can get lodged in a cell of shame and self-protect or start a habit of attacking others.

True maturity is rare.

Wisdom is a gift received through awareness and often through suffering, but it is not a pension that is received across the board and acquired like Medicare.

Time can work you over like a expert boxer works over a fresh challenger with body blows.

Nevertheless, there is a kind of measure you can employ to see where you stand.

Of course, the temptation will be to first, or more thoroughly, measure others with it. (The more the temptation to do it, or actually doing it, means what? Can you guess? Yes, the more you lack on the scale.)

 

9 Categories Measure True Maturity:

• love

• joy

• peace

• patience

• kindness

• goodness

• faithfulness

• gentleness

• self-control

Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how are you doing?

All 10s?

 

If you’ve noticed some gains and big improvements in these 9 qualities over the last few years, you are getting more mature!

If others have noticed, you might actually be right.

If you sense some problems with a few (or more) of them, then you might be stuck in arrested or delayed development. Ultimately we all should try to grow up…

 

BUT, that’s not to say “grow old” … There’s a big difference.

The surprise twist is that a spiritually (and in all other ways) mature person usually has a youthful timelessness to himself or herself.

Mature people have a humility that keeps them in a state of learning and growing. They don’t allow themselves to take themselves too seriously or suffer from sustained flare-ups of self-importance. So, in them you see a lack of arrogance, self-righteousness, or aloof disposition.

 

What should you do if you don’t measure up?

1. Admit it.

2. Ask for help (from God and others).

3. Keep trying and learning as you go.

4. Never think “I’ve made it!” or “I’m better than someone else.”

 

 

Galatians 5:22-23

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!