Last week, I paged through a magazine designed to inspire moms with ideas for fun family activities.
I didn’t feel inspired.
I felt like pulling out my toenails.
I didn’t feel inspired.
I felt like pulling out my toenails.
I read articles on repurposing old juice boxes, hiding veggies in desserts, and creating the perfect Easter egg; all the while, feeling like a complete failure as a mom.
Here are my confessions:
- I’ve never created a toy car wash out of old milk cartons and felt.
- I still bake old school chocolate chip cookies: butter, flour, and sugar. (If I’m truly confessing, I also buy the pull-apart dough.) And, I’ve never ever hidden chick peas inside cookie dough.
- My children don’t decorate Easter eggs with dye made by mother nature herself– turmeric and cabbage. We use store-bought dye and cheap vinegar. Cheap, I tell you.
The magazine did inspire me to realize one thing:
When I evaluate myself as a mom, a friend, a wife, a neighbor, my first instinct is usually to ask myself a pretty rudimentary (and frankly, rude) question: Am I good or bad at this?
The problem with this line of questioning is it’s based in a magazine’s value of “goodness.” Anytime I position my worth against a glossy, trendy, commercialized version of womanhood, I will always end up as a “bad” mom/wife/woman. I will always feel ashamed.
In journalist Warren Berger’s latest book, A More Beautiful Question, he posits the theory that creative questioning can lead to problem-solving, improvements, innovation, and fresh thinking.
Could it be that fighting against shame also involves chasing beautiful questions?
Could it be that fighting against shame also involves chasing beautiful questions?
That afternoon (post magazine-shame) I was jogging down a path which stretches beyond my house all the way to the city of Chicago. The section alongside Lake Michigan is gorgeous. On my side of town, the thing is a freaking eye sore.
 |
| See what I mean? Ugs. |
To the left of the jogging path: dead brambles, garbage, and algae-laden swamps
To the right of the path: desolate fields
In the middle: broken orange clay skeet-discs. (There’s a shooting range nearby, so the jogging path is littered with these. Not to mention the fact that I literally have run for my life, in case any shooters decide to get trigger-happy that day.)
As I ran through that corridor of choas, I began to wonder, first of all, about a city beautification project. I mean, COME ON, already.
I also began to wonder what it would look like to actively pursue beautiful questions.
I also began to wonder what it would look like to actively pursue beautiful questions.
When I begin to feel ashamed, what if I responded differently?
Rather than minimizing myself as either a good or bad mom, wife, daughter, etc. what if I asked:
In the midst of a dead, dark, and difficult world, am I offering the people I love—my husband, my kids, my friends, my neighbors—a clear path to the love of God? How can I do that today?
Rather than obsessing over the trendy Easter egg dye of the moment, what if I asked:
Am I evidencing the true Easter to those around me? Am I showing them the resurrection life; the presence and pleasure of Jesus?
I know I’ll never do this magazine-perfectly, but because of Easter, I am not expected to.
I am currently obsessed with the spiritual memoir Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber. (You must read it.) Weber, a professor of Romantic Literature, describes the intricacies of coming to faith while studying at Oxford.
Ruminating on the resurrection power of God, Weber describes His love like this:
“A love that turns back to a place of danger to retrieve its beloved. Love that illustrates itself in acts of words and trust. A love at work in the unseen. A love that weeps over us, releases us, raises us, removes our grave clothes, and tells us we are free to go. . . An upstart love. A radical love. An uncontainable, indefinable, incomprehensible love. A love that invites and defies and eternally transforms.”
Then she asks herself a more beautiful question: “Dare I believe this?”
Today, in response to love of God, I am going to ask more beautiful questions.
I am currently obsessed with the spiritual memoir Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber. (You must read it.) Weber, a professor of Romantic Literature, describes the intricacies of coming to faith while studying at Oxford.
Ruminating on the resurrection power of God, Weber describes His love like this:
“A love that turns back to a place of danger to retrieve its beloved. Love that illustrates itself in acts of words and trust. A love at work in the unseen. A love that weeps over us, releases us, raises us, removes our grave clothes, and tells us we are free to go. . . An upstart love. A radical love. An uncontainable, indefinable, incomprehensible love. A love that invites and defies and eternally transforms.”
Then she asks herself a more beautiful question: “Dare I believe this?”
Today, in response to love of God, I am going to ask more beautiful questions.
I praise Him for already providing the most beautiful answer, in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
I love Surprised by Oxford, Joy gave it to me as a present this summer before I left for school and I couldn't put it down.
I've been learning this year something similar to what you're expressing here: there are right questions to ask, and wrong questions. And I think that we can spend a lot of life asking the wrong questions and thinking that life is about those answers, but I'm not sure that's true. I am discovering that I don't always ask the right questions – in fact, I think I spend a lot of time asking the wrong questions – and I'm trying to learn how to ask good questions. Ask beautiful questions. And how to live those questions and live my way into the answers. And that life of question, I am finding, has led me much more into resurrection life.
Jess– Joy also gave me the book! She must've known we'd love it. Thanks for sharing. Much love to you.