a simple life.

We’re a family in transition, which all of you know full well.

There are about a hundred stressful things about being in transition, all of which we experience to some extent about every day.  I like to complain a lot about these stressful things.  I think, if I’m brutally honest, I even like to some extent to be stressed, because then lots of people feel sorry for me.

But when the complaining in my heart dies down for a  moment, and I make time to just sit and be, I see that there are also gifts that come with being in transition.

One of these gifts is a chance to step out of your life, to look hard at it, to ask questions about why you do the things you do.

And why the things that are important to you are important to you.

And how you want the next season of your life to be the same or to be different than the last.

For the past year-and-a-half, we lived an intense, bright, difficult life in South Asia.  It was so beautiful.  I will be forever grateful for the gift of living in that country, of scratching the surface of a culture so foreign to my own, of beginning to know people who jarred my world with their brokenness and their beauty.

Living in South Asia changed me.

So I guess what I’ve been mulling over lately, is the question: Just how did living there change me?

We came back to America at the beginning of June, and the biggest surprise I faced was how seamlessly I melted right back into my home culture.  I embraced our country; its freedoms and its privileges.  I wanted what it wants—to be comfortable, to be noticed, to have nice things, to be included in what everyone else is buying and watching and doing.

Within weeks of moving home, I’d find myself thinking things like, I need an SUV.  I need to get on Instagram.  I need to buy two half-gallons of Breyers ice cream because they’re on sale. I need to eat strawberries even though they’re not in season.

First it occurred to me what I wanted, then I found ways to justify why I should have it (Our family needs a reliable, spacious car.  I need a phone with a GPS.  I haven’t tasted truly good ice-cream in a whole year.  I want to make strawberry shortbread right now.).

Please hear me: there is nothing wrong with SUV’s or iPhones or Breyer’s ice cream or strawberries, in and of themselves.

But one day it hit me that there was something very wrong with my sudden driving need for all this stuff, and more than just for stuff, for whole a way of life that says, “If it’s available and if I can afford it, why not have it (do it, watch it, eat it)!?”

Then I remembered my life in South Asia, the poverty I not only saw but that I knew personally in the form of dear friends.  And when I looked at the greed and covetousness in my heart I felt deep, deep despair.

Did the past eighteen months mean nothing?

But you know what?  God is so gentle.  What He didn’t do was smack me in the face with shame (Nope.  I did that on my own.).  Instead, He showed me, bit by bit these last couple of months, that all the things I’m striving for will not make me happy.  The striving just makes me feel stressed out and left out—or included, but for the wrong reasons.

I think He’s given me a chance to rest.  To ease back into my culture—and I repeat: He’s been so very kind in the way He’s done it; by allowing our family to enjoy beautiful things and the generosity of so many people.  To heal in body and spirit.  And even to wrestle to the point of tears with the dichotomy between two worlds that could not be more polar opposite.

But now the peace is returning.  It’s coming through conversations with friends.  It’s coming through reading a variety of books, most recently one called 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess (which you can be sure I’ll be blogging about).  It’s coming through thinking hard and talking with David about our experiences in South Asia, about the trials we’ve been through, and about how we want our family to live in light of those experiences and those trials.

So all of that brings me to my point, and that is this:

I want a simple life.

I’ve had a lot of things stripped away over the past couple of years, in one way or another.  Comfort.  Reputation.  Health.  Competence.  Identity.  Success.

It hurt so, so bad.  Some of those wounds are still raw and bleeding.  What they’ve left in their wake is someone who is more humbled and broken and needy than I have ever been.

But I think an unexpected thing that happened to me as a result is that I’ve realized I can live without some of the very idols I’ve held most dear my whole life.  In fact, in this moment I am currently living without them.  And I’m surviving.  My heart isn’t only devastated, it’s also . . . quieter, bowed before God, ready for Him to speak.

All this time I’ve thought He was tearing things away because I wasn’t good enough (for ministry, for relationships, for whatever).  But suddenly, like a light turning on in a dark room, I see that He tore them away because He loves me.  Because He is good enough.

I am shocked.  It’s been just me and Him a lot these last few weeks, poking around in the dark, hidden corners of my heart.  And He’s right here, giving me Himself.  This is a mystery I’m still trying to find words for and I know a half-formed blog post probably isn’t the best way to search.

But here’s what I know.  I cringe away from any hint of suffering.  I mean it—I hate pain, I fear loss.  But.  What I’ve experienced in these weeks is enough to say, “I want more, Father.  More of You.  Please don’t make me suffer.  But if that’s what I need to feel Your presence, to know that You’re enough, then I’ll accept it.  Please make me smaller so you can be bigger.”

Do you know how scary that prayer is?

It’s like diving off the edge of a cliff.  And yet, I’m standing here, ready to jump.

And so, to make a very long story short, that’s what I mean by “I want a simple life.”  I want to make more room for God.  I want to make more room for people.  I want to live embracing with joy the things that matter most—not pining for the things that will never make me happy.

Right now, I’m on a mission to discover exactly what that means.  But I know it involves disengaging myself from the rat race of our culture of more (busyness, things, beauty, popularity, praise, ministry success).  And not because this will make me a holier person.  But for the very simple reason that it will make me happy.  It will make me free.

I don’t know exactly what a simple life looks like for our family yet, but I imagine it looks a lot less like a neat, finished product by which to measure my own and others’ righteousness, and a lot more like a messy, lifelong adventure.  I know it looks inclusive, not exclusive.  I know it looks like God getting a whole lot of glory and me getting none (which, by the way, is way easier said than practiced).

A friend has asked me to blog about this journey toward “A simple life”, so I think I will from time to time.  The last thing I want is to make anybody feel guilty or judged.  But the only reason I’m embarking on this journey at all is because people have made me uncomfortable, have shaken loose the packed-tight earth that held my cherished values, have shown me there’s a different way.  I’m forever grateful to them.