There and Back Again

I'm at the mid-point of my fourth semester in my PhD program. How amazing!

As the weeks roll by, I am gaining insights about doctoral education, about being a life-long learner, and about endurance. A PhD candidacy is an intense, rich experience. It seems to me that there is nothing on earth quite like it.

Since I last wrote to you, we had a wedding. Our oldest son Joshua married Sonika, an Indonesian woman with a wonderful laugh and a warm heart. Their wedding was in Maui. Let me tell you, Maui in December is a very fine place for a wedding. On Christmas Day, their first as a married couple, the newlyweds drove the famous Road to Hana with breathtaking vistas. Their happiness was ours.

This photo is of my husband and me, and our two sons and their wives. The water was a jewel-tone, turquoise color and the cliffs beside us were black, formed by lava. 

The wedding was a wonder-filled, surreal experience. After turning in three major research papers the day before, I completed my last exam by 9:00 PM and left for the airport at 4:00 AM, just seven hours later. The flight was twelve hours long, but smooth and relatively comfortable. Upon landing, we were thrust into a tropical, nautical paradise, far from the bitter cold wind in Philadelphia. We lodged in the home of a brother I had not seen in a decade. For a week, I spent my mornings watching the sun rise over the ocean from his deck.

During my PhD candidacy, normal life continues to happen, to go on just as it did before. Once in a while I have to make space for it. I need to feel normal life as it happens around me, instead of only rushing through the months ahead, careening from project to project. Each time I pause my PhD program to feel my life, I'm glad I did.

I entered my PhD program as a person with a full, normal life, and after graduation, I will still be a person with a full, normal life. In the future, whatever I do with my education will be done by a person with a full, normal life. Even if my doctoral education and credentials disappeared, my life would be filled with people and meaningful experiences. Light, love, and joy await me, regardless of how this doctoral experience concludes.

Times like this wedding help me remember. 

Box

It's been a while since I wrote. In a lengthy adventure, all sorts of things happen. This time, I was delayed by death.

My older brother Jay and a beloved aunt both passed away. The first death occurred two weeks before the end of the semester. The second one came five days after the semester's last day. These two losses were twenty days apart.

With the Student Development Office, I arranged a one-week extension for my coursework and finished all of it inside the semester. This was the best option, since I'm already committed to completing a summer course, and I must take three required preliminary exams and a German exam in August. In addition, we are anticipating the company of Joshua and a special friend arriving from Indonesia on June 17th.

How did I do it all in May? How will I do it all in June, July, and August?

It's very helpful to use the strategy of a time box for challenging situations. I created the time box to help me complete tasks that are overwhelming or to complete tasks in seasons that are overwhelming. The time box is a box crafted with a beginning and ending time each day, which can be drawn visually on a calendar, schedule, or planner. Inside that time box, I commit to doing the very best work possible on a particular project. My list of tasks is limited, specific, and targeted towards a goal. I do not attend to anything else during that time. I do not answer the phone or the door or let internet distract me. Inside the time box, nothing is allowed to interfere with the project. Inside the box, I have a simple focus.

Outside the time box, I live the rest of my life. I do not neglect people. Most of my time boxes last for a few hours a day, and there is plenty of time leftover for all the remaining responsibilities and relationships.

When the time box ends each day, I leave it behind. When the deadline arrives for the project which was completed within the time box, I live with the consequences of whatever I could accomplish. In many situations, it is far better to do one's best within limitations and then accept the results and move on. This is what I will be doing with my summer.

Because of my very high stress, I will  use a set of time boxes to contain and control each of my projects and manage my workload---while making time for grieving and self-care. Phone calls and emails will be pushed to the weekends as much as possible. Saturdays will be the catch-all day for distractions, unexpected events, and miscellaneous tasks and errands. Sunday is a rest day. In addition, I have given myself permission to take a 20-minute break at any point when I need one.

The weekday time boxes look like this:

7:00 - 10:00 .............................Self-care

10:00 - 3:00 ............................ Summer Course

3:00 - 5:00 .............................. Housework

5:00-7:00 ................................ Meals

7:00 - 10:00............................. Reading

This structure will reduce the strain by limiting my effort and focus. I have found that boxes can make solid ground for shaky legs and softer light for tired eyes.

I hope you have enjoyed this peek into my strategy for hard times.

Nudge

It was New Year’s Eve, and I was on the fence. I had considered repeatedly whether I should join the #walk1000miles challenge with a group in Britain, which meant a daily average of 2.74 miles, 7 days a week. But I had not yet filled out the official form. I was concerned about whether I should make any commitments, aside from my PhD studies. Sure, I could just drop out if the walk project was too much, but I did not want to use January to start a venture which would consume precious time and energy, unless I was supposed to do it. Yes, finding the walking group was a happy serendipity, and I had been working up to 3 miles hikes on my walks in a state park. However, last spring, I had injured myself (again) and could not do any walking for months. Coming back from that injury was a slow process. I knew I needed to make some positive changes for continued health, but was this walking program a good tactic? What really captured my imagination was hiking the length of the Appalachian Trail in a year, which would mean an average of 6 miles a day, but I knew that was unrealistic. So I vacillated. I lingered. I waffled.

After a failed attempt to find the Rodin Museum downtown that afternoon, we decided to eat our New Year’s Eve dinner at P. F. Chang. My sister-in-law and her husband had given us a gift certificate, because we like the restaurant. At the end of our meal, the waiter brought us two fortune cookies. I opened mine, munching on the cookie while I squinted to read in the low restaurant light. I read this: “Tomorrow is a good day to start a new exercise.” It stopped me cold. Normally, I don’t rely on little paper messages in random cookies for restaurant customers. But this one nailed me. Tomorrow was the prescribed start date for #walk1000miles.

So I signed the official form. The next day, we went to Valley Forge to walk/run, and I found myself covering at least 6 miles. I had thought the trail was about 3 miles, which would have been a reasonable expectation. Since we moved here, the most continuous distance I’ve covered is 3 miles, when challenging myself—so I knew it was doable. My miscalculation gave me the gift of a heartening surprise. The next two days, I walked 3 miles each day. Then on the third day, I completed 5 miles, with minimal soreness afterwards. I had no idea I was so close to a break-through! Now, an added benefit has emerged: the longer walks have relaxed me. My former worries have been replaced with inexplicable serenity. I’m sleeping extremely well, deep and long, after enduring weeks of short, restless nights.  

Later that week, I remembered the fortune cookie note. I pulled it out of the pencil case where I had stuffed it and taped it to my calendar. I sent up a warm prayer, “Lord, you are amazing. You arranged for that cookie to come to me at the right time, didn’t you?” Then a clear, quiet thought zinged right through my mind: Yes, I did. Of course, fortune cookies do not have real power in themselves. I’m not suggesting that we follow fortune cookie messages. My point is that God can use many means of communicating with us. I knew this note was not a coincidence. This note was the gentle nudge I needed.  I knew it immediately by the burning in my heart, which reminded me of one of my favorite verses at the end of Luke's gospel:

 “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ ” – Luke 24:32 ESV

Go Forth

At the front of my planner for 2017, I have included a poem I just discovered.

Becoming

Once or twice in a lifetime
a man or a woman may choose
a radical leaving, having heard
Lech L'cha--Go forth.

God disturbs toward our destiny
by hard events
and by freedom's now urgent voice
which explode and confirm who we are.

We don't like leaving,
but God loves becoming.
                              - Rabbi Norman Hirsch, God Loves Becoming

Lech L’cha are the 5^th and 6^th words in the Hebrew text of Genesis 12:1, “YHWH said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country and from your kindred and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” After setting out, Abram received a new identity as "Abraham" in Genesis 17:5.

As I look back at 2016 and peer forward into 2017, it seems that a good life is really about becoming with God’s direction and power. Living well is about going forth, instead of shrinking back.

Change is difficult. We don't like leaving a familiar life. Research has shown that people tend to overestimate the value of what they have and underestimate the benefits that a change would bring. This is even more likely for people who are successful, who have acquired satisfying relationships, significance, and prosperity through diligent effort. Why should all those assets, achieved through years of labor, be set aside for a risk? Yet God knows we need to move forward in faith, in order to be fully alive and to become like him.

Sometimes, he helps us by hard events.

For me, becoming has meant leaving a familiar life behind, taking chances, being a beginner again, and moving outside my comfort zone. This has been hard to do. My success makes it even harder to continue. For me, going forth and becoming are more challenging with every additional year, because I think it will cost me more. Each year, staying where I am, and enjoying the benefits of what I have already done, looks more appealing. The only thing which pushes me onward is the unsettling conviction that God is calling me to go a bit further. Over the last seven years, I have learned that my rising personal cost yields a rising personal wealth—the kind of wealth which God gives to all who go forth with him. This wealth is an accrued ability to influence other lives.

In my going forth, I have uncovered a dynamic principle: God’s power for changed lives through me corresponds to the degree of personal change he has worked in me.

Rewards for going forth multiply with age, as they did for Abraham, who chose to go to a place he had never seen, with inspiring results for himself and for generations. In God's eternal economy, radical obedience produces multiplied benefits for mature sojourners and for others within their spheres of influence—some of these benefits are quite surprising. But most of us hesitate to leave what we have, because we are unable to calculate the benefits of radical change, of going forth with God to something entirely new. How can we solve this dilemma? First, we need to be honest about our blindness and ask for God's help with managing ourselves. Next, we need to choose carefully with proper motives. Finally, we need to take action and rely on God's goodness.

When we are called to a radical leaving---we can change the world with our "yes." Even if we have no idea what God is doing, we can be assured that he will not waste our obedience. Even when our performance in a new arena disappoints us, he can work wonders. Because he is always with us, we do not travel alone. Because he is with us, we display his wisdom, power, and redemption, as our years rise to a crescendo, climaxing in heavenly glory. Our stories can be life-giving to generations who need to see that God exists and that he rewards those who trust him.

From One World into the Next

My first PhD semester has ended. Since August, it has seemed to me that my life is being rewritten while I am still unsure what character I should be. I have many questions without answers. Who am I? What does it all mean? Shouldn't I grasp more of this plot? Am I on the best path here?

In mid-November, school became a blur as I raced to meet deadlines, and the sheer volume of work overwhelmed me. I had a major research paper with comparisons between biblical Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. There were forty academic books to read and write about. My translation of the Aramaic sections of Ezra were due in one week, just before exams. My Aramaic final was very challenging; I struggled with every rare word and verb form. Each task took three times longer than anticipated in a new culture with unfamiliar, and often unspoken, expectations. By Thanksgiving, I knew I would learn primarily by trying and falling short, but I must try with all my might, even so.

Honestly, I was drowning in work, with heavy rain on my head and water rising at my feet. I did not see how I could complete my assignments. Yet, amazingly, as I moved forward, hour by hour, I managed to survive. At certain points, I paused to drink in the beauty around me on one of my walks; there in the woods, I was restored briefly--before plunging back into the deluge. In the last three weeks, orientation was impossible. Point north might be anywhere. I needed to trust that God had me, even when I felt lost.

Then, in a moment, after my last exam, it was over. The waters abated, and I could see the moon above me in a navy sky. There was a great hush--still night, holy night, God is here, Emmanuel, my breath--I could hear my breath, and then sleep folded like a blanket over my weariness.

The next morning I awoke to snow. Swift and sweet, Christmas has arrived with full force. Now quick preparations are underway for guests, gift-giving, and travel. Everywhere we go, we are awash in lights, greenery, and music. My tired eyes are dazzled. Like a child of Narnia, I have tumbled from one realm into the next.

Standing upright in this moment is my joy to the world. With Noel rushing upon me like a blazing star filling my dark night, with angels singing glories filling my ears, I am here. I am here.

Come, Lord Jesus. May you find room in my heart, poor and burdened, as it is.

Photo of snowy bricks in Germantown, PA by Dave Tavani.

Go to Joy

This morning I’m listening to worship songs on Pandora for the first time in weeks. These songs used to be a significant source of private encouragement. “I will stand my ground where hope can be found,” used to be my battle cry (from “O’Lord,” by Lauren Daigle). These songs pull me back to an earlier phase of my educational journey, when I was transfixed by the wonders of translating the text of the Bible in its ancient languages. Then the great crystal sea of God’s Word rose in my horizon like a shore that had been waiting for me, but which I did not know was there until I arrived. I dived in and lost myself for five years.

Who says that there is no glory in this life? Scripture is a glory, a sea full of holy life. God gave me a small bowl in which I could carry a little portion, and from which I could share this life with my friends. Like fine heirloom silver, I treasured this life in the text, in spite of uncertainty in our future, the burdens of taxing requirements for my degree, interpersonal conflicts, health problems, and grief over private losses. Joy in the text rode on top of these troubles like a slim, diaphanous sailboat which could not go down. Buoyant and swift, it led me forward into greater light, into national conferences, and eventually to this place. Such was my life, my true and transcendent life, in a land of summer.

What I realize now is that the earthly problems continued to be problems until we moved. But the joy of the text remained in spite of the problems. That joy has transformed me. I no longer recognize myself. I have experienced so much change that I do not know where I am going next. Nothing prepared me for this great love and cataclysmic upheaval which has leveled everything else I thought was part of my life. Past things are gone. Memory is the gift they left behind. Yet I am more fully alive than I have ever been, alive to a new life that I could not have envisioned five years ago.   

From these experiences, I have learned that  trials and anxieties are a constant, shifting presence in our world, but genuine joy in the Lord cannot be taken away. Earthly life is a strange endeavor, and there are many unexpected developments. In a fallen world, we make investments without knowing which ones will produce permanent benefits. But God’s joy remains.

In addition to all of this, I'm amazed at how a new, rich earthly life has emerged in the midst of pursuing heavenly joy. Here I find beauty and meaning, health and strength, love and laughter, all bubbling up around me. I left everything behind, yet I have everything I need. This is not for me alone. Ministry pours out spontaneously wherever I am. As C. S. Lewis wisely wrote in Mere Christianity:

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are likely to get health, provided you want other things more--food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.

From this vantage point, I urge every friend to pursue the greatest, deepest joy that points toward God and his work. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matt 6:21). And I would add to his words, when your heart has found true lasting treasure, you will change the world.  

Journal for the Journey

As smoke and dust clear from the first six weeks of this semester, I'm putting together a refreshed edition of my beloved bullet journal which has kept me so well for the past year—with a firm hope that I can sustain a balanced life, even in this rigorous, doctoral program. From past experience, I know that I must write my way through difficulties and challenges, disappointments and triumphs, in order to remain whole. I must write my way through every research project, my heavy course load, and my dissertation.

I need to create a space that lets me "talk" about my experience in a highly personal manner. I need to notice and express  emotions and spirituality, not just academic and vocational progress. Unless I'm careful, I can become so consumed by work that I lose myself in the battle to get it done. How easy it is for me to live as though my life is all about the battle and nothing but the battle! Over time, such devotion brings me no advantage. It drains my enthusiasm, strength, resilience, flexibility, creativity, humor, and compassion. At the same time, I know that eliminating the work is not a viable solution, because the work itself matters. What I need is a third space, which is neither work nor home, where the noise of the world is hushed, and I can "come in out of the wind," as C. S. Lewis once wrote. More than anything else, writing about my life and my work  is the key to creating this third space.


Regardless of what anyone else might think, I am a writer. I write in order to learn, to think, to find my way, to know myself, to make a contribution, to shine light in dark places, and to know God better. I am a writer in the marrow of my bone. Writing is how I weave a worthy life out of the tangled threads that have come to me across time and space. I weave as I write, and I weave from what I write.

Here on the page, I find my heart’s rest, where it beats still quietly and steadily. Here I know that I am real, and the storms which have washed over me have not taken me away. I am a writer in the breath of my soul. Here I am, and here I shall be found, all my days.