Tag: what’s possible

Moving

Moving

“See, I am making all things new.” Rev. 21:5

I’m moving offices and although I’ve been in my current office only three and a half years I’ve accumulated lot of files, reports, and books. Between the sorting and packing the other day I took a break to talk to a colleague about a new project. Our conversation led us to the subject of organizational change. We speculated about how a bold new initiative can generate energy and enthusiastic action, then ever so slightly fade over the years as it becomes institutionalized. It gets seen as normal, as “the way we do things here;” new ideas and energy are directed elsewhere. People are curious and as much as we like patterns and routines we also like new things and we like to be creative, creating. Both for our minds and our bodies, we have to keep moving to stay lively, limber, and flexible.

I imagined a lobster trying to grow without shedding its shell. It would be squeezed, constricted, stifled, and unable to move because of the weight of all the new shells formed over the old. While it is disruptive to pack up my office and move to another building, it also is an opportunity to shed some baggage and possessions that are old and no longer useful. If I were to drag to the new office all my old files, books, and mementos, I too would be weighed down and unable to move, unable to grow or change or to do new things. That printout of the presentation I made in 2000? It was a good presentation but now it’s out of date, and the printout doesn’t make it any more current. The national norms from the 2001 survey? They probably are on the web by now, if I ever really need to see them. It is okay to give up old things (old habits, old ideas) so that there is room in my new office (new year, new life) to think and do new things.

What is it that’s holding you down, keeping you from being able to move? Is it possessions? Things you’ve signed up for or agreed to do? Attitudes? Things you think are supposed to be so? What new things could you be doing, what new friends could you be making, if you had some freedom to move, to breathe, to stretch and grow?

It doesn’t have to be difficult, and it doesn’t have to be done all at once. I started with one file, then another. Then one drawer, and a shelf. It felt great! It was liberating to let go so that I can move on.

Which will you be – the lobster with all its old shells, weighed down by their gradual accumulation? Or the lobster with a new shell, growing and changing?

Gracious God, thank you for the example of nature, ever growing and changing. Help me to resist the temptation to stay the same. Let me follow your lead toward newness of life. Amen.

Finding what I’m looking for, or not

I was sifting through the kitchen drawers, looking for the lobster crackers. You know, the shiny silver colored kind you use to crack open the hard shells of the lobster claws (or mixed nuts, if you prefer.) I looked in one drawer then another with no luck. I checked and rechecked. I knew they were there somewhere, as we had used them before. Shiny, silver, . . . nothing. So I asked my friend, in whose house we were cooking the lobsters, to look for them. He dug around in the drawers and found them. One was black and one was maroon, the plastic kind.

As I was digging it had occurred to me that I wasn’t finding them because I was looking for what I thought I would find. I wasn’t really seeing what was in the drawers, just what wasn’t. But I hadn’t stopped long enough to reframe my view. I kept on looking for what I thought I should find!

How often do we do that? How often do we see what we are looking for, instead of what’s really in front of us? When I am looking for it, I can see trouble, bad news, bad luck, or “evidence” confirming my side of the story.  My pre-conceived ideas can lead me see what I want to see, or to overlook something else. And I can be so sure of what I think I know that I don’t stop to consider that my assumptions may not be accurate.

I need to be careful to set my viewing filter to a setting that is less focused on what I think I’ll find, and more on what is there. I need to be more willing to see what’s possible, instead of what I’ve already decided is there.

Lord, open my eyes to see so that I can see all the good that you have set before me. Thank you for your gracious abundance and forgiveness.