MERCY MEANS TRYING AGAIN

Ugh! This is my inner voice telling me to chill out and try again. If you are anything like me, I can sometimes get caught up in a new thing I am trying to learn and it can get a bit frustrating. My blood pressure rises a tiny bit and I start to feel like I might prefer to move on to spend time on something else.

Or maybe I am not trying something new, I am just doing something I have forever done and I find the monotony of it grinding at me.

Two thoughts:

Sometimes the grind is good

There are plenty of times that the grind is just that: a reminder of responsibility. I think back to a story my (much) older sister, Amy, once told me. She was teaching a student and asked the student to do some activity, to which the student replied, “Ugh! Do I have to? I really don’t wanna!!!” Amy, with a tone of compassion replied, “Ooooohh! Well, you don’t have to want to do it. You just need to do it. Sometimes we need to do things we would rather not prefer doing. But we just take responsibility and go ahead and get it done.” Ha ha! I love that story. And to this day, when I hit the grind, I say to myself, “I don’t wanna” and then I laugh, and do it anyway. The grind can help produce both character and perseverance. It makes us stronger people.

I might be doing it wrong

Then there is what I call the uber-grind. This is a larger philosophical moment outside of the grind moment itself where we question, “Why do I have to put up with this relentless monotony? Surely I am scraping the bottom of what I can get out of this experience. For the love of all that is Holy, God may I please move on!” This is the moment when I start feeling like I turn the corner from having learned a lesson to having over-learned and over-studied and I am just tired of having to round this corner one more time.

Life Hack: How to not do it Wrong

In every kind of circumstance, be thankful - 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Stop, and talk to God about the moment and not the specific situation. Be thankful for the little things and take a breath and remind yourself, this is only one of many moments. Being thankful isn’t always about being specifically thankful for the grind, but being thankful in the bigger picture during the grind, despite the grind.

My thoughts are not your thoughts - Isaiah 55:8

Every moment in life is first seen through our default point of view. And that point of view is often based on our personal experiences and history. We see a little kid lose balance and start to stumble, and our brain jumps back to the last time that happened and the kid fell, hit their head and screamed and cried in pain. So we jump out to catch the kid. But we don’t get there in time and the new kid takes a tumble and giggles. See? Our experience only paints the picture of one possible outcome for that moment. Sometimes, we need to hit pause on our experience and ask God if there might be another way to look at this situation. Sometimes the view is bigger, or adjacent to the old lesson, or maybe it’s a meta-lesson of some sort. Again, we aren’t talking about the grind of one moment, but pursuing a new perspective on a particular uber-grind.

Renew a right spirit in me - Psalm 51:10

In my first year of college I had this friend on campus who was hilarious. We would see each other while passing between classes and he might be talking with a group of friends. And suddenly, without talking to me, he start doing this subtle celebratory dance in his little group of friends. But then the dance would start to spin out of control and get much bigger and he would start swinging his arms more and act like the dance was messing up his balance. That was my cue. I would come running in and tackle him to the ground in front of his little group, and then he would pick himself up and thank me. We would then lecture the group on dance safety and how that particular move really needs a spotter to be done safely and successfully. Pretty silly stuff. But I think sometimes, in real life, my spirit, my heart, gets a bit wonky, and distracted, and what used to bring joy is now more of a missed moment for me as my hear careens to the left and right, warbling out of balance. I know I need help to pull it back into balance again. If I keep warbling forward, I am going to crash. God tackle me to the ground! Spot my heart and help me to dance safely.

So, those are my thoughts. When did you last contemplate your philosophical grind? Have you lost your joy? It might be time to stop all of the distraction and be intentional about recalibrating with some God help huh?