Half is the New Empty!

As anyone who has passed a gas station recently can tell you, the price of gas is back on the rise…again.  Some sources say it may hit $4.50 per gallon in the Baltimore area by Memorial Day.

Beth and I did not make any New Year’s Resolutions this year beyond the big one:  We Are Going to Get Out of Our Own Way!  This is a task big enough without the burden of yet more resolutions left over from New Year’s that would probably fall off to the side by March anyway. In simple terms, getting out of our own way will entail unburdening ourselves…of ourselves and the silly things we do.

Ever play fuel gauge roulette?  You know, the game where the low fuel warning light has come on and you try to see just how far you can push it before needing to get gas becomes having to get gas…or worse.  One of the things Beth and I are trying to work on is avoiding fuel gauge roulette in our expansive fleet of two minivans, both of which are constantly on the go, what with family scheduling for work and four kids.  Sometimes the gauge hovers ominously at, or beyond the BIG E as a budget issue, or from just plain laziness.  Hey, we’re from Jersey. We don’t pump gas! And Beth has a plaque on the wall to prove it! 

Filling the two vans to brimming would cost about $200, which at certain times of the family budget cycle might as well be a million.  So, we throw twenty dollars or so at a shot in the tank and go on our merry way.  Now, it’s funny how two college edu-ma-cated people fail to realize that 20 bucks today means twenty bucks three days from now and 20 more three days from then.  Somehow, to our frazzled parental minds, $60 bucks at one shot is just waaaay too expensive.   We would rather pay 20 bucks three times!  Go figure- cuz we obviously don’t.  So, the tanks remain near the BIG E and we bite our nails and hope.  We spent our lives hovering on empty.

Enter the new paradigm  (to Vader’s theme-duh duh duh da dee duh, da dee duh) where we try not to be our own worst enemy!  No more fuel gauge roulette!  So, we bit down hard, drove to the nearest self serve and inserted the quivering, terrified debit card into the pump.  We filled up both tanks and decreed “Half is the new empty!”- meaning we throw 20 bucks in the tank three times a week every time the gauge gets to the midway point.  Hey, we’re not changing the world here- these things come in steps!

This got us to thinking:  are we treating our walk with God in the same way we treat our gas tanks?  Are we playing roulette with our spiritual gauges?  You know, the game where we get so low down from our Sunday spiritual high by Thursday and become the people that kept Gandhi from becoming a Christian?  Somehow we get the feeling that on some days, we are those people.  This little light of mine needs fuel to let it shine.  Sometimes we don’t need a bushel basket to hide it- because we have failed to refill it. 

By waiting to come to God until our spirit tanks are hovering at the BIG E we have failed to stay connected to all that he has promised us. (Ephesians Chapter 1).  Gods filling station is always open and is always FULL SERVE.  There’s no need to wait until we are rock bottom and out of sorts to come in for a refill.  We don’t have to pump our own- the Spirit He has promised is on duty 24/7.  We should trust our spiritual cars to One who wears the stars- as a crown! 

Sometimes it is our time budget that denies us the refill because we allow life to get in the way.  But waiting until we are running on empty does not fulfill the Great Commision- it puts us out of commission.  Why do we wait until the needs are so dire, that our souls are weeping and bleeding, to reconnect with Him?  It’s time for a fill up- and time to make half become the new empty.

And so it begins...

We wanted to get this initial post up for New Year’s, when everyone makes their resolutions.  But, somehow, once again, we got in our own way!

We are tired of being in our own way. We start projects with all the vigor of “DIY to the Rescue”, but then fade, gloriously but without sticking the landing.  Picture a wounded, yet somehow confident, Kerri Strug flying down the approach, ready to make her heroic Olympic winning vault…and  then flying over the horse, missing the pad and breaking her other ankle.  That’s us.  

We chase four kids around, pursue two careers, car pool, raise elderly parents, care for the house…yadda yadda yadda.  The same things everyone else does.  We’re no different. We’re not complaining about anything…other than ourselves.  We are a 550hp engine with a bad clutch-  lots of power, plenty of noise and very little forward progress. These four spinning wheels are getting a little old.

So, tired of ourselves, we have engaged a process.  Thus, inspired by the successes of friends (WE LOVE YOU ANGIE HAUBE!) and the renewing of our spirits, we are ready for something new, something better.  We are ready to get out of our own way.

We didn’t get in our own way overnight, and we don’t expect to extract ourselves from our own foibles overnight, either.  We are not looking to throw darts and hit numbers, nor are we goal oriented in any other way than we just want to get the kids’ bathroom finished. 

Sometimes the things we over-educated parents need to learn don’t come from self help books, or gurus, or New Year’s resolutions.  As a matter of fact, we resolved not to make any resolutions at all.  Sometimes life’s best lessons come from the most unexpected places- like the mouth of your six year old.

When Paul wrote about putting away the childish things he probably didn’t mean for us to think of that as something connected to a singular transition, something we do once and forget about.  Putting away things which aren’t doing us any good, or are even hurting us, is a continuous process.

Sure, we all make the jump from “kid-dom” to adulthood and can’t wait to sink our choppers into the things that await us. Our dreams and aspirations for the next stage fuel our jump to what’s next.  We imagine the grandness of growth and just can’t wait to get to where we are going.  We all had things we had to give up in order to make the transformation complete.

Our darling daughter, Emmie, is all of six (and going on twenty seven).  The other morning in the rush to get everyone ready for school she absolutely refused to leave the house with her favorite lunchbox.  She used to carry this thing around all day long, like a treasure to behold. It was her prized possession.  This poor, battered box had received some serious lovin’ along the way!

When we would go to Chick Fil-A she wouldn’t eat her meal unless it came from the lunchbox. She would carefully remove the food from the bag, or tray, put it all in the box and close the lid.  Then she would open the box like it was Christmas morning and exclaim, “Look what I’ve got!  

Now, and very suddenly, she was ready to abandon the thing she had once held so dear.  “Darling, I thought Dora was your favorite?” I asked. “Daddy,” she replied very seriously, “Dora is soooooo toddler.  I’m in first grade now and I just can’t do Dora anymore.”

Sometimes when we get to where we thought we were going it hits us that the grass is not so green.  Other times the transition produces positive results that are beyond our best dreams.  In either case we have probably brought with us some baggage that we don’t really need anymore.

Our walk with God is an on-going process of building, tearing down and rebuilding. With each stage we enter we have to put away some of the things that are no longer relevant.  These things that once seemed so important, so self-defining, are no longer necessary.  In fact, these very things that we hold so dear may, in fact, be holding us back. 

Sometimes we have to give up our lunchbox.  

Our train is leaving the Station of Mediocrity.  Not sure where the next stop will be, and we are sure there will be many whistle stops along the way, but we are hoping that the end of the line is in a place where we are not in our own way ever again.