So, this weekend I attended a Children’s Ministry Conference at my Church, which has packed my brain with lots of awesome stuff to think through in just reflecting on the significance and importance of childhood, and of the immense potential we have to impact (for good or bad) the future of the world through our kids…how we set them up for success, which depends in large part on how we define “success” in general, and especially for them, and also for ourselves (because how we choose to live and evaluate ourselves has a powerful impact on how we respond to and encourage or incidentally shame our kids in raising them and leading them through each day and stage of their development).
The conference ran Friday evening, all day Saturday, and finished up this afternoon at our regular Sunday Service… So while I tried to write something out Friday night after coming home (to try and stick to my goal of a weekly entry), I was too wiped out to finish something coherent enough to post publicly…
Notably, I had felt convicted to take a slight detour from my discussion of perfectionism to try and articulate “the significance of the heart,” and of prioritizing a deeper perfection over “picture perfect” perfectionism so that there is room in our lives to truly value and cherish the heart and its not-always-so-convenient, not-always-so-rational feelings and desires… Because building a life that appears “picture perfect” on the outside (generally meaning doing whatever leads to a successful career and public image?), before first prioritizing and tending to what matters most on the inside, more often than not leads to an emptiness or loneliness on the inside that no $ or fame can fill or fix…
On Saturday morning, we learned about the importance of (and quick “how-to” create) good soil from Bethel Church’s super insightful and anointed children’s ministry pastor, Seth Dahl (from the Parable of the Sower, Matthew 13, Mark 4 & Luke 8) — and the gist of the message really was that, if the soil is our hearts, then to know how to cultivate our hearts to be “good soil” really is the beginning/starting point and necessary condition of any type of real, sustainable growth and transformation and breakthrough (from the “weed” problems and issues that try to invade and take over the soil of our hearts).
One of the significant decisions I remember making at one point in my life as a teenager (can’t remember exactly when, but sometime near the beginning of my adolescence when those deeper thoughts and emotions began developing, along with my earlier bouts of depression), was that I wanted to keep my heart soft, whatever the cost might be…even if it meant not being able to escape the emotional pain I felt through a lifestyle where I could distract myself with work or even ‘self-medicate’ with the temporary “relief” offered from the effects of alcohol and drugs. I wanted to know that if, one day, I no longer felt the pain in my heart that I felt, that it meant it was actually gone and dealt with and healed, and not just “deadened” or masked or covered up….
I didn’t want a life built on pretenses and distractions… because if life really was precious and worth living, and there really was a reason to have “hope” for things which would not in the end disappoint us, then it had to logically be possible for me to one day become truly better and even happy to be alive.
I think…in many ways the decision to “keep my heart soft” was a potentially risky and costly one. My emotions really were a force to be reckoned with, and life- energy- draining, and powerfully demotivating …and excruciatingly painful at many moments in my life… so much so that when I hit rock bottom at the age of 16, I really felt hopeless for my life to be anything but one day too big a risk for the danger I put people around me in…
However, I believe keeping my heart soft also strategically set me up to be able to hear from God when I had exhausted all other resources I knew to go to… and to be able to understand that I really had nothing to lose but to try things out His way, to follow the leading of that Voice which had spoken to me in the woods, because with continued commitment to keep my heart soft, I would know if/when things really were changing in me or not… In the same way that I couldn’t give in to workaholism or alcoholism to distract me from the reality of my pain, I wasn’t being asked to give into dependance on religion or religiosity that would demand I conform and act a certain way just to fit into church life, without ever actually experiencing a living, transforming relationship with God.
As Pastor Seth had shared, when soil is good, it is soft and moist, and nutrient-rich…and even able to draw nutrients (minerals) out of the rocks which otherwise may have seemed to be “in the way” of suitable ground for planting… It is weed-repellant (as in the seeds of weeds that are blown over it by wind are actually deterred from landing onto good soil), and when any weeds to somehow happen to land and take root and begin to grow, it really is an effortless process to take out the weed with a firm but gentle jiggle (versus the struggle and messiness and uncertainty of trying to pull weeds completely out of dry, hardened ground).
Also (from Pastor Seth’s sharing), when soil is good, the vegetables that grow out of that rich and moist soil are also so water-filled that when insects try to take a bite out of, say, a head of lettuce, they actually end up drowning because there is so much moisture, rendering insecticides unnecessary…. so anyone and everyone can enjoy eating, versus the dangers young children and the alarmingly rising numbers of people affected by food allergies face when consuming a lot of today’s insecticide-filled produce.
I think, while the process of becoming good soil is not one that happens overnight just by deciding one day that’s what we want to be or become, I think it can only “begin” when we first make that decision to choose that’s what we want to be…when we decide, despite the inconvenience it will cause to our pride, or to the security we can no longer fully draw from the “picture-perfect” life we have been able to build and present to the world, that we want to keep our hearts soft and keep caring about and believing in the deeper things that our hearts most desire are still possible, and worth sacrificing our pride to pursue…
That’s when transformation and breakthrough begins, for us, but not only for us — it’s also for our children and generations who follow after us, and for the potentially countless lives we do and may one day touch and impact)…
Anyhow, I guess what I’m trying to say is that…in the same way that it is important to have good soil, it is important to value and have a soft heart. And that as risky and inconvenient as it may be, my life is at least one small testimony that it can most definitely be worth that risk and inconvenience…