Work

Colossians: Keeping Christ in Focus sermon spoken by David Patterson, Colossians 3:22-4:1 NASB and the past two years of work experience in healthcare collected these thoughts and placed them together into the lines below.

Therapy.

It’s slowing me down.

I want the whole picture.

I want to have it all figured out.

Some of these stories, don’t get uncovered in 1 visit.

It’s relational.

It is slowing down.

Putting the list of questions aside.

Connecting with the people sitting across from me.

It is listening before speaking.

It is getting on their level.

I want to have all the answers.

I want to know it all to help best.

But this is not on my terms.

Therapy.

It’s become therapy for me.

An invitation.

To slow down.

Shift directions.

Change the focus.

Connect.

That’s what God wants for us.

To slow down so that we can see Him.

To shift out of directions that aren’t leading us towards Him.

To change our focus from the things that won’t fill us with His love.

To focus on His love.

To be filled with it.

To connect with His love.

So that we can know our Maker.

Not just in our heads.

In our hearts.

2 years into working this is what I am learning.

Work too is an opportunity to glorify God.

Grace and peace as you work this week!

Danielle

Knowing and Believing

I believe I know everything. Really I do. Not even in the ‘I know the things I have learned in school.’ I wish this were a joke, and sometimes I laugh at it when it’s written on paper, but I really, somewhere in the corner turns of my heart believe I know everything.

This is so not true. Not even close to the truth! And when I see it on paper I know that I don’t actually think I know everything. I just believed it for so long it sits around like a nasty habit, like eating sweets before bed or forgetting to brush my teeth at night.

And just like forgetting to brush my teeth this habit reeks. I mean repeals people worse than my breath after eating garlic knots. I don’t know why someone wouldn’t want to be around a person who says, “I heard that” or “I think it was actually this…” I mean who wouldn’t want to have a conversation with a person who corrects them like auto correct on messenger?

I sat around people like this all through high school. One guy specifically did this and it made my skin crawl like ants were all over me every time. He used his knowledge like a whip to snap people into their place, ranking them one by one based on how they measured up to him. Or at least that’s how it felt.

And he never did this intentionally, by no means because he truly was a sweet heart. But he believed he knew everything.

And so do I, which is probably why that habit about him struck me so because it pointed a huge arrow to my faulty belief that I knew everything.

Everything is a big word. It’s hefty and grandiose. It can mean all things that exist or all things that are important.

Yet, we throw it around like it’s nothing, which is light and carefree, just filling the space in our sentences to connect one thought to another.

ALL. Wrap your brain around the word all: the whole amount or quantity or extent of; as much as possible.

All things were made through Him (John 1:3).

ALL.

The whole amount of things were made through Him. Everything, all that is important was made through him.

I forget how big God is, how grand He is. I get caught up in the doing of life, the laundry, seeing patients, watching TV, paying bills, seeing friends and thinking about the future, to sit with the truth that He made EVERYTHING.

I wanna sit with that truth and drink it in like a Saturday morning cup of coffee. I want to visit that like an old friend from school asking questions and learning of happenings since our last hurrah together.

I want that truth to travel the path from my head, where I think I know stuff, down to my heart, where I actually believe it. I want these words to hold meaning and power again in my life and take their place instead of filling in a sentence. I want them to melt into my heart like ice cream in summer or butter on pancakes. I want them to make a mess of my life, turning upside down the things I believe to make them right side up.

I want a life that does not know it all, but knows the One who made it all.

50 pounds or less... (a flashback post)

“I don’t need that bag,” I said. “Or this one really that’s just clothes to donate. This could wait until January, but that needs to go in the suitcase!”

“Ok, we are at 53 pounds, what else can we take out?” my aunt said.

“Uhhhh……”

I wish this could be made up, but this was my life just a few hours ago.

I’m the worst at traveling light. I might need my running shoes and extra charger and light blue thin sweater if it got warm and my three journals! Then about halfway through packing I adopt the mindset that I need nothing and will buy everything when I get there. These two extremes mean I fight during packing and end up with more than I need of one thing, like shoes and books, and completely missing the other, toothpaste, contact solution and even glasses (this has happened).

So when I found out I got a job in Gainesville (yes I’ll be permanently moving back to work with kids!! Ekk more details coming!), I was stoked because all I had to do was load my car up and go.

Or that’s what I thought.

On my way to Florida, my car died on the interstate/highway/expressway/road where cars and semis go super fast and cars should not die. I wish there were a more professional term, like the radiator blew or the transmission failed. Truth be told, Sven (my green Honda Accord) died. There’s no other way to describe the sound he made after being in stop and go traffic for 45 minutes. He refused to move and stopped us there, in the right lane of I-65 South.

Through a series of circumstance, I got off the road, into a hotel in small town Kentucky, fed, back to the car garage, picked up by family and friends and brought back to Chicago. With ALL my stuff.

If you ever want to know what you truly need, breakdown. Seriously, you probably don’t really need half of it, maybe even most of it. I found myself sorting clothes I didn’t know I owned and looking at books I never read this afternoon. 

“What do you absolutely need when you go?” asked my aunt.

“I don’t know.”

As I began to sort I found that what I thought I needed was excess. Books to study from, coats that won’t get worn and binders filled with notes I haven’t read adding weight to my suitcase. Weighing me down.

I think we do this in life too. We fill our schedules and time with things that we think we need, and they are all good things, like books and talking and travel and friends, but we lose focus of what we really need. The essentials, the basics.

Maybe this is what Christ meant when He said to the rich young ruler sell everything and follow me. He wanted him to lose the excess to gain the essential. What he actually needed rather than what he thought he needed. Christ didn’t want him weighed down.

I still am awful at packing and probably and taking back way more than I actually need. However, I want to start looking at essentials, the basics in my life that I really need.

“How much do those bags weigh?” I asked, praying it was not over, because I had no more room and the car was already gone.

“49.5 pounds each. You’re good.”

Look out Florida, me and my 49.5 pound bags are coming for you!