Author: Amanda Viviers

 

Lately I have been asking myself the question;

What is God doing in my today?

I am a dreamer who spends a lot of time in the future, but more and more I have been changing my focus from tomorrow, to today.

A strategy I have relied upon to help me with my stress in the moment, is by planning and preparing for my tomorrow.

I didn’t realise until a few short years ago that spending all my time trying to control the outcome of tomorrow, was a form of escapism that I used in my everyday.

I feel pain right now, so what can I do to control my tomorrow so this never happens again.

I feel like I have dissapointed someone and let them down, how can I change this so it never happens again.

I feel overwhelmed with the out of controlledness of this situation, so how can I plan safety so this never happens again.

Have you ever felt like this?

Have you lived in the perpetual cycle of keeping yourself safe, that you miss what is actually happening in your today?

As we have walked and talked, listened and learned from people who are less than nine months short of two major earthquakes, where they lost thousands of lives and hundreds of thousands of homes, I am shocked by the immediateness of the need and the tenacity of a people living in the fear of what could happen tomorrow.

They are focussing on their today.

Last night we went to a resteraunt, where we were told the story that in the immediate hours following the earthquakes, they cooked, hundreds and hundreds of meals and made sure their neighbours were fed.

Today as we drove home from church, we watched a line of three hundred or more, cars and motor bikes lining up for fuel that costs more than six dollars a litre, for hour upon hour. What absolutely shocked me was the locals who were picking us up and driving us to places, wasting their precious resource on us.

We sat in a beautiful humble church this morning, with four passionately breathtaking women who sung their hearts out, under a open sky, with the roof of their building unfinished and half built after the earthquake, that they sat singing outside through the raining night in the hours after the disaster that took their homes.

Every single one of them are basking in their today. They are making a difference with the little they have, helping another despite their circumstance.

“The question asked is not, ‘What should be happening in my life?’ but ‘What is happening in my life?’ The present moment, the present set of circumstances, the present relationships in our lives—this is where God lives. This is where God meets us and gives us life.” ALICE FRYLING

I love these questions from Alice Fryling, instead of focusing on our circumstances and all the problems we have in our today, why not shift our perspective and by accepting our today?

I believe God is always up to something, it is us that needs to refocus on the present.

Day 21: I am fasting my need to know everything about my tomorrow and to start accepting my today.

Say the right thing, do what is right, forgive and forget and keep the peace.

We have all experienced seasons and time when we have struggled in an environment to bring forth our true self.

What if they see the cracks and the dysfunctions?

What if she dislikes and unfriends me?

What if we will never be the same again because they know?

Stepping into the vulnerability of travel to unknown places with people you have only met briefly is always the most difficult of days.

All the smokes and mirrors, filters and editing of our lives become the raw cut of days spent travelling with a group to uncomfortable places. When we step out and do things we have never done before, then we are sure to be confronted with our own weakness.

Heavy late night snoring, squeezing yourself into spaces that were not designed for humans and luggage to inhabit, unpaid taxes, taxi drivers ripping you off, the list unravels.

Short overseas trips like the one we are on have the capacity to completely undo every part of us, that comfortably survived on our flat white, air conditioned existence.

And this is the exact reason why I stepped onto this plane.

To be provoked.
To be unravelled.
To find the pieces of religion that have stitched up my insides and made me believe that I am somewhat worthy of acknowledgment.

Where is smoke lingering in your today that is hiding you from a opportunity in your tomorrow?

Where are you shining a mirror to deflect people away from the intentions that are hiding?

Today as I step into unknown places I am asking all those little religious quirks that are hiding in my deep places and marching them off to a distant shore.

So as much as I want to make myself sound better than I am and tell stories that provoke and alarm, today I am reminding myself to listen and lower.

To decrease and undo.

Day 22: I am unfurling my religious inklings and finding grace in the unknown.

As we land into Nepal today, with the plane food swirling in my stomach, I am overwhelmed with the pure thrill of the unknown. Stepping out of the ground hog day of novice Motherhood, fresh from the smog and chaos of Bangkok, disquieted by the old men leading young women into hotel rooms and inspired by everyday people immersing themselves for the sake of another.

Every single time I step from a plane onto a distant land, my heart aches, grows and stretches.

Every time I stand in a customs queue, behind a screaming toddler, watching throngs of humanity writhing I shrink in the vast magnitude of our difference.

Every time I walk in corridors of decay, rubbish and unclean unknown of developing nations I breathe perspective deep into my veins, my bones creak with the awakening of injustice.

Every time we step from our comfortable perched places, we eyeball the apathy in our lives and cant help but be deeply convicted.

As we have been sitting on this flight together, I asked one of my companions what her greatest concern is for the church in the next few years and her answer was apathy.

Compassion fatigue, luke warmness and attitudes that place us in comfortable resting positions. Then I grabbed my copy of 40 days of decrease by Alicia Britt Chloe, which I am reading and reflecting on here on my blog and her fast today is apathy. No co-incidence indeed.

apathy , n. /?æp???/ Freedom from, or insensibility to, suffering; hence, freedom from, or insensibility to, passion or feeling; passionless existence.

I think we become apathetic, because we become a people who are seeking comfort and satisfaction over purpose and clarity.

When was the last time you felt an emotion so deeply that you shocked yourself?

When was the last time you did something so out of your comfort zone that your legs quaked?

When was the last time shivers overwhelmed you?

Apathy describes an emotional disconnect from life in general and suffering in particular. In a society drowning in bad “news,” apathy can seem an attractive alternative to absorbing the insane amount of planetary pain that the Internet brings to our attention every waking moment. Alicia Britt Chloe

We live lives of over saturation of information, we live voyeuristic days watching, judging and stalking, rather than watching what if we stepped in the arena and awakening the sleeping giants like sympathy, sensitivity and concern?

What if we asked questions and listened to another’s story finding compassion and mercy waiting on the bridge of connected hope?

I think we become afraid of engaging because we have seen it all before, we’ve been to the conference, bought the t-shirt and came away the same person. I think we are so disillusioned by the magnitude of the worlds problems that even the thought of doing something small, our little offering, that it won’t make a difference. I think we are so afraid of stuffing it up, that we pull back before we even have the possibility of failing.

“Joy and sadness are born at the same time, both arising from such deep places in your heart that you can’t find words to capture your complex emotions. But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence.” HENRI NOUWEN

The truth is however that when we enter the arena, when we have a go and fail, when we contribute even something small, we have won the apathy war.

It is a plague taking over our world in epic proportion. It is a disease that can only be healed by action. Apathy has the capacity to ruin more lives than any potential loss we face by engaging in another’s story.

As I prepare right now to land into a country I have never visited before, to spend time with hill tribes of people who are still shaking in the wake of a recent earthquake, I am asking God just one thing.

Give me eyes to see.

Dear Lord,
Awaken in me.
Let apathetic places be ripped open.
Give me eyes to see.

Day 23: I want to fast apathy and awaken those bitter and broken places to believe again.

Have you ever been in a conversation, when you know that you need to ask for help but haven’t?

Have you ever wanted to say hello and strike up a friendship, but walk away silenced?

We all self protect in different ways. Some of us get louder as a fighting mechanism. Some of us get quiet and shrink to the back of the room. Some of us manipulate and control, others of us check out and zone out.

Each and everyone of us, has different mechanisms that help us to protect ourselves when we feel vulnerable.

Writing, speaking, singing, painting, drawing, instagramming are all places where we can feel completely out of our comfort zone.

As I write this blog, it is totally my therapy and then when I press publish, all I want to do is run away and hide. This week a story tumbled out of me, that was quite a few years old. But the problem is it created quite an avalanche. It seems many people felt the sting of it’s content and it began a few heated debates on social media.

All I wanted to do was hide.

All I wanted to do was put my computer away and not write again.

It is funny, every one of us have different ways that we try to protect ourselves in our seasons of vulnerability. The truth is that not all self protection is unhealthy. It helps our hearts regulate, it comforts our weary soul just like my sons blue and blackened blanket. Self protection in the midst of a serious accident is a very normal reaction. However when we spiritually self protect, when we step back and build layers between our relationships so we feel safe, this is where we lose. We lose because we live guarded, we live removed, we live as a spectator in life rather than a participant.

It is an interesting question I am asking myself today from Alicia Britt Chloe’s Lent Devotional 40 days of decrease…

How am I spiritually self protecting myself from God?

Woah, what a question.

Do I feel safe with God?

Do I trust Him?

I am realising that my disappointments in God have created a chasm, where I believe He is good, I believe that He is God, but that he needs to be kept at a distance.

I am taking time this lent, to swim across that chasm and take time to reflect and draw close again.

To lean in.

Day 25: I am learning to notice when I am shrinking away from God, rather than trusting that He is good and He is safe.

Maximus Andries Viviers | 26th of February 2012

My waters broke in quite an extravagant fashion that morning, it was 8am on a Saturday and we were just nestling in ready for a sleep in with my 38 week old belly. My husband and I had only been married for 10.5 months and our honeymoon baby was ready to be born.

We had no idea whether it was to be a boy or girl, so our hospital bag was packed with white and lemon, with little gifts we had selected along the way of our quick detour to parenthood and family life. I had made a commitment at the beginning of the year, that no matter what happened, my first year of Novice Motherhood I was going to blog. Writing had become my therapy, in the midst of my ever changing body and life.

As my husband picked up our carry all and grabbed the keys to the car, I asked quietly if we could stop at the cafe on the way to the hospital. His dear in head light look, will be one I will never forget, but I knew that the next few days were going to be very short on coffee and super long in exertion.

So he walked nervously inside and I sat in our car and wrote my blog post the promise for that morning. After a big day of contractions, hesitant conversations and so much pain, the midwives sent me home again, to wait for my body to be ready to bring our baby into the world. I was so terribly nervous, unsure. The funny thing about being sent home, was we were in the midst of renovating our bathroom, so there was a tiler at home whilst I was in labour, he was finishing our bathroom.

I am not sure what he thought he had gotten himself into, tiling away, with a woman in labour in the next room.

Our Saturday was full of pain, music, candles and big courageous, what is actually going on here. Giving birth is so overwhelming and the not knowingness is always so difficult for the novice. They told us not to come back to the hospital unless the contractions were closer together and I couldn’t handle the pain any longer.

At 10pm that Saturday night, we drove back to our local hospital and I was hooked up to the monitoring machines again. As soon as the stickers were placed on my contracting stomach, the midwife went ashen and she rushed out of the room. Within minutes a doctor raced in, another midwife returned and they asked me to remove all my jewellery. It was all happening so fast, but within minutes I was being raced down the corridor to surgery for an emergency c-section.

Charl and I tried to laugh that we felt like we were in a episode of grey’s anatomy, but I was overwhelmed at the thought of what if? Our little babies heart beat was dropping suddenly with every contraction and his life was at risk.

Within minutes we were rushed through theatre, my husband ran in wearing the blues and the epidural was the most painful experience of my life as they tried four times without success to get it inserted in the midst of contractions. I was one try away from being completely put under and within seconds I was opened and my blue baby boy was removed from my body.

They found his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck twice and he was being strangled by every contraction that pushed him downwards.

These hours of my life were my most vulnerable, but my most precious.

Every part of me ached, I was confused by the surgery but so deeply grateful that my little person was okay.

The recovery from an emergency cesarian was quite difficult.

Four years ago on this day, everything changed for me.

Motherhood asks so much of you. It takes faith to believe that our littles will be okay, it stretches every part of my body, soul and mind. Motherhood asks that I will be lavish with my time, my sleep and my patience.

It asks of me even on the days that I am feeling unwell or under-appreciated.

It consumes me.

It frustrates me.

It completes me.

It breaks me.

It is impossible to be stingy with our motherhood, because it is never ending in its ask.

After four years of hanging out with this little man of strength, I still feel like a novice. I still get overwhelmed, I still worry if I will break him, I hope so much for him. This week I watched the movie Suffragette and afterwards I was so deeply moved that in the darkness of the night, I laid in bed with my little soul and sobbed.

When he was born we posted a quote from Gladiator that Maximus shouts in the arena.

“Brother, what we do in life, echoes in eternity”

Today I am grateful that this little soul and his dramatic entrance into the world forever changed me. It asks of me to love even when I am not sure I have any love left in my heart to give. It calls me to give, when I am not sure I have anything left to give. It teaches me about my own soul, even when I think there is nothing else left to learn.

It echoes the heart of a God, who gave extravagantly, even when he didn’t want to.

“I am not moved, my God, to love you By the heaven you have promised me. Neither does hell, so feared, move me To keep me from offending you. You move me, Lord, and I am moved seeing you Scoffed at and nailed on a cross. I am moved seeing your body so wounded. Your injuries and your death move me. It is your love that moves me, and in such a way that even though there were no heaven, I would love you, and even though there were no hell I would fear you. You do not have to give me anything so that I love you, For even if I didn’t hope for what I hope, As I love you now, so would I love you. ANONYMOUS SPANISH POET, OFTEN ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN OF THE CROSS (1542–1591) 4”

Day 27: I am learning that Motherhood challenges every single part of us and it echoes in eternity.