When Paying Attention Hurts & The Importance of Play
I had another letter in the queue to send to you today, but this morning I woke up with a nudge to write something new. The truth is I'm a little heavy-hearted, so I sat down with a fresh journal page and my Bible for a soul check. We have had a very packed couple of weeks with mostly good things. The weather has been unseasonably warm, which for us equates to good enough to golf weather. After a long stretch of cold weather, I have been reminded of the importance of play. So today, I will share with a bit of my heart and leave you with a nudge to try something new.
My journal every couple of pages has a short Bible verse on it. Today's verse was one many of us know. "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Philippians 1:6) Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter. He goes on to tell the people of Philippi how kind God has been to all of them and how much he loves them. He could have been bitter, but he was quite the opposite despite his circumstances. It makes you wonder how the exposure to brokenness in prison worked in favor to mold the heart of Paul. In verses 9-11, he prays something beautiful. "And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God."
He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion. That is both a promise that He will never leave us or forsake us and a subtle hint to say that it will be slow, sacred, and even painful work.
Although I could feel a physical lift in my spirit after reading these verses, something still sits heavy. Perhaps I'm just tired. That may very well be so, but these verses did point me to the pain I am feeling. I've been meditating on these words, "that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ..." Paul is urging us to be wholehearted people. This is another way of saying that once you know true love, you can't simply look the other way and forget when something is broken. We have an example of what is pure and blameless in Jesus, so it is right to long for that to be true on earth as it is in heaven.
In getting down to the root of my heaviness today, this is what I have come to. When we resolve to pay attention, we begin to see more vividly both beauty and brokenness. These are the times when paying attention hurts. When I can sense an ensuing crash, a heaviness sets in. When I feel rejection from the things of this world, I can at least momentarily revisit a place that tells a story of shame. When I see emptiness, my deepest desire is to fill that gap between a striving that never ceases and the overwhelming kindness of God that never quite makes sense. I say this not from any sort of throne, rather from a place of knowing what it means to be chasing something that has no end, that is, until you crash. Recovery time from such a crash is long and painful, and from where I sit, something I wish others never experience.
Of course, I know I can't save someone, but I can tell an entirely different story according to the grace I've been given. One that as my new friend Tim Willard says "is not derived by the desires of culture, but by the wonder of their creator." That's what it means to be image-bearers and see it in the eye of another. This is our call to create something beautiful in our homes, vocation, and communities. To partake in the beauty here on earth and to reflect it back to our creator. Abounding in love is to write a different story with our lives.
The point in sharing this story is that when we set out to pay better attention, chances are you will come across times when it hurts. Our hearts are formed when we pay attention—formed by beauty, by wonder and by things that will break it. Incidentally, this is the very heart of a book that I have been working on for a year and a half now. It is a story about how we all carry a deep thirst for something that can only be found in the heart of a God who will complete the good work he began in us. In that, we can assuredly be confident. Thanks be to God.
I thought you mentioned something about the importance of play? Why, yes I did! And if you're still reading this, you have now gotten a pretty good look into my mind in a twenty-four-hour cycle. I am a firm believer that joy and pain can very much coexist and may even work together for our good. Sometimes when they collide, the most profound forms of beauty are found.
My guess is that you will never see Chad and I write a marriage book, but I will share with you what has been one of the most impactful practices in our marriage. That is the practice of play. A couple of years ago, we were asked what keeps us together during a counseling session. We weren't in a crisis moment, so it wasn't that kind of question. He simply asked us what made up a good percentage of our glue. Our answer was pretty quick. We have always been good at having fun together. We have had heavier seasons on work, but we have always found our way back to each other in some form of adventure or play. They say a child's work is play, and I'm not convinced that we should entirely give that up as adults. When we lose our sense of play, we lose our wonder.
Two years ago, after fourteen years of trying to convince Chad to take up golf, he finally caved and bought some clubs. In full transparency, we tried early on; it just wasn't his thing. I had given up the dream of doing something that I grew to love growing up. Fast forward to now, golf has been a central theme of our lives. I figure I should say something about that here because my guess is that it could make a regular appearance in what I share with you. We started early on in the pandemic when golf was still deemed essential. We took that quite seriously, the "essential" part, and have played well over two hundred rounds to date. It is no exaggeration to say that it helped us heal as a family when our hearts were broken, a story for another time. I won't make this a newsletter about golf, although I very easily could! It entered our lives as an essential activity, and I don't foresee it going anywhere soon.
The point is not to take up golf; the point is to find something set aside for you for the sole purpose of play. This is not your afternoon walk or run to get your steps in. It's not a "to-do"; it's a "get-to-do." If you argue that you don't have time, I would say that you can't afford not to. I will be talking a little more in the coming letters about how we schedule our weeks, including blocks of time for play. More than any other practice, this is the one that sustains us, both individually and as a family.
Play increases our awareness. Often it requires movement and is with somebody we love. The brain fog lifts, our senses heightened, our creativity enhanced. I find it easier to connect with people when we are sharing activities, and in the end, we leave refreshed for the things we have to do. If you haven't set aside time for play in your schedule, I highly encourage you to prioritize it. You will be hard-pressed to walk away with regrets.
"The true object of all human life is play." -G. K. Chesterton