Finding the Way to the Life We Wanted to Live

Our journey of discernment; gaining clarity and the list of non-negotiables

We never out grow our need to how to make good and wise decisions.  As we grow older the complexity of options; the myriad of possibilities and rivaling priorities of many options we hold in life, make decision making a challenge. Let’s face it, there is a lot at stake in trying to make a good, solid and wise decision.

Then, there’s the whole idea if God really cares at all whether you move here or there; have one kid or two; take this job or that job and even which church you might attend.

Just how micro does our macro God get in our nitty gritty lives?

Books have been written about finding God’s will. Sermons preached. Our songs express our longing to know God’s will—to gain direction and to find our way.

A few years ago, while reading the Psalms, one particular verse stood out to me and I distinctly remember thinking: “I don’t think I’ve ever read this verse before in my life.  If I had read it, it skipped over me and I did not pay any attention to it.”  Funny, how we say things like that until we need it.  There’s an old wise saying which says, “The teacher will come when the student is ready.” 

Psalm 143:8 says, “Let the dawn bring news of your unfailing love, for I put my trust in you. Show me the road that I must travel for you to relieve my heart.”

I memorized this powerful verse and during the long COVID nights, a few years back, Gwen and I said this verse every single night at bedtime. We wondered, like so many, what in the world is going to happen to us—to our Grandkids—to our friends. It helped assuage our own fears about our family, the world situation and speculation about future things.  Imagine us focusing on this one single verse to help us navigate all we are facing these days. Every day brings the sunrises, for sure. But every day, these current days, is bringing constant change; breaking news and a growing sense of cynicism that says something like: “I’m not sure God cares at all. Life sucks and it’s up to each of us to make the best of it we can.”

I spoke about this beautiful verse in a Podcast that you might want to listen to here: Click here to listen to the podcast on Psalm 143:8

But this simple verse of Scripture offers us a few foundational clues about the nature of God –the extent of God’s caring and about God’s ever present love. These two guiding lights help us realize some

·      God’s love is unfailing and God’s nature is love—not wrath and not being absent in the world’s events.

·      God’s love expressing itself in showing us the way we must travel in order for our hearts to find some relief.

Of course, there is more in this verse than these two big take-a-ways but these two ideas help re-frame a way we can find our way forward and find some relief in the midst of this messy world we’re living in right now.

For me, this verse opened the door for Gwen and I to begin to re-think our lives.  We began a more serious attempt of finding our way forward, a few years back when we realized that we were going to age out of massive travel; invitations to speak and teach and a growing desire to live the life we spoke about and wrote about (imagine that!).  Our attempts to find our own way; gain clarity and get some direction in our lives resulted in us having a private retreat with a wise spiritual director and friend who we loved and respected. I called her and said, “I think we’re stuck. We can’t get any clarity about what to do next and Gwen and I are not on the same page about what we want—it seems. It’s like this: I want to do this and she wants to do that.”  To be honest, it was a time of not being on the same page.  And this reality caused some hard feelings, disappointment and bewilderment over if we could EVER find our way through all the options and competing choices. Can any of you relate?

We asked if she would lead us in a retreat which we named, “A Discernment Retreat.”  We went away for a few days together and our time was so beneficial in not only finding our way forward but also in helping us really understand each other more deeply—even after over four decades of marriage. The layer of how to do our remaining years on Earth seemed so huge and daunting that we just needed help to find our way. We needed clarity. We needed discernment.

Discernment presupposes that there is a desire to WANT to know the way forward.

Discernment is the process of gaining clarity on finding direction for the next step of our journey.

I want to unpack one of the exercises we did in the Discernment retreat because I have referred to this multiple times in recent months on my social media posts and in letters to our friends and donors. But here I want to explain it more fully because so many of you have asked.

We were asked to work independently of each other for an hour in her home and come up with our own list of what she called, “The Non-Negotiables” of what each of us wanted in this next phase of life.  It wasn’t a list of “pro’s and con’s.”  It was more primal; more spiritual and more gutsy. Pro’s and con’s are useful when you have narrowed down many choices to one or two. We honestly did not have a clue about what “we” wanted. In full disclosure, I had what I wanted. I could see myself at the coast; riding in my boat; stopping off at a dock to have a drink and watch the sunset. I guess I thought shrimp tacos every night sounded great. But that desire, wasn’t on Gwen’s list at all. It was a huge disappointment to give up a dream that I had somehow always held on to in my heart.

Understanding desires is the greatest portal to understand our spiritual lives. As we know, Jesus was often asking people “What do you want?”  We often miss that core question in our hurry and scurry to read about the miracle or escape from a tight predicament. But Jesus knew what we need to learn. Desires matter. They matter alot. By exploring our desires is swimming in the deep water of the spiriutal life. When we open the box of our desires, one is never sure what might come out.

We all have longings and desires! Desires are what distinctly set us apart as human beings, created in the image of God from the butterfly, prairie grass or mountain trout.

·      We desire peace.

·      We desire forgiveness.

·      We desire friendship.

·      We long for a community to share our lives with.

·      We want to change.

·      We want a job that gives us a sense of satisfaction and purpose.

·      We want heaven.

The list goes on and changes from time to time and as we age. ( I highly recommend The Language of the Soul by Jeff Crosby on understanding longings and desires.) But often in life we want more direction and clarity. We live in a day with many options and abundant choices. Which church to go to? Where shall I live?  And who will I invest my life with to “do” life with now?

Gwen and I needed to be courageous with ourselves to finally put the pen to the paper and have some assurance that the pen with which we wrote, was somehow attached to the deepest place in our hearts.  It felt very important. It felt big.

It seemed a lot was at stake. We didn’t want to make a mistake and I distinctly remember this haunting and nagging feeling which went like this: “Steve, you better get this one straight because you don’t have time to recover from making a mistake now.” That made me nervous and anxious.  There are many factors in decision making that arise when you cut to the core and explore the way forward.

When we came back together, we each took a turn reading our lists to each other.  What happened is the realization that we were saying many of the same desires but expressing them differently.  But this exercise allowed us to put on paper the real deal—the real list of what we felt was absolutely so important that we wanted it documented for each other.

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Our Non-Negotiables in Our Big Transition

What we could agree on together—that we wanted and was important.

In discerning our next steps of life; in seeking to make a wise decision that we could not regret but embrace, we wrote up several non-negotiables that would be like buoys in the sea that could guide  a boat to the right harbor. Each buoy—each desire felt like a marker to help us look out for the next marker and so on until we found our way to the right home—the ideal space to live out the rest of our lives—or at least the next few chapters.

I’ll share here our list of non-negotibables. This is what we wanted. This is what proved to be buoys and markers. This list became the “stuff” that helped to “relieve our hearts,” as the Psalmist prayed and we prayed.

·      A place of beauty.  Beauty first!  In a world so torn and divided; in our work of hearing so much sad; we made a choice to choose beauty and to immerse and baptize our souls into that which had the innate power to review us; renew us and sustain us.

·      A place of proximity. We wanted to be near a small town—one without traffic, myriads of people and one that was immersed in nature. We did not want to live remote again. We wanted to be close—within walking distance if at all possible to shoppes, church and coffee shops. Bikeable if at all possible. We love our E-bikes! Walkable is essential. We wanted to be close to great health care.

·      A potential for community.  We want to find a place where like-minded people could gather to tell their stories and dreams of life together. We did not want to “do” life alone. We needed a few people who would invite us; receive us and shape us.

·      A place that would reflect who we are.  Place matters.  Place extends an invitation to be.  In such places, we wanted a ‘thin’ place—a place where we could see the Sacred; feel the Divine Embrace and rest. We wanted a place to share that would reflect our hearts and souls. We wanted our home to be a reflection of us. When friends and family came, they would sense a place of home and comfort.

·      A space that we could have friends and guests to come. We wanted a space with options for outdoors, porch and out door fire—all the elements of life to enjoy.

·      We wanted to be two hours from our extended family if at all possible. We each have brothers and sisters. Gwen has her 95 year old Dad. We wanted to be within a reasonable time of travel to be accessible and available.

·      We wanted our home to be a destination for our adult children and our grandchildren. We wanted our home to be a place where our immediate family would WANT to come and enjoy with options for being in creation and apart of creation.

To keep it simple, so that we could actually remember these, we shortened each of these to a word or two. It became a code for us. We’d rule out one town or another city, if that place did not meet most of these.

What I’ve written is our list. Yours is going to be different because we are all unique; all with distince that God’s placed desires in our heart. But try it! Make a list and your non-negotiables that you want right now in your life. If you’re married—do it together. Or do it with a trusted friend and just see what comes out of this for you.

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There is one non-negotiable that both agreed on that we have not realized. I’ll share that one in an upcoming entry. It’s core and essential and we are still wondering how to want something so deeply and passionately that doesn’t seem like “it” is going to happen now. This one non-negotiable, I’ll add under the category of “Paid Subscriber.” Why? Because it’s personal, deep and still a gutsy thing to share. I’ll post it this weekend along with a poem I’ve been working on to share with you.

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