The Shadow Side
The Sorrow and Joy of Not Being Able to Do it All
There seems to be a shadow side to almost everything. With every good thing, there are trade offs and sacrifices made in order to have the good thing. Saying yes to one thing means saying no to a thousand other things. This is increasingly apparent in an age when opportunities abound. Endless technologies allow us to bow to the god of efficiency. If I’m cooking dinner, I don’t need to JUST cook dinner; I can also listen to a parenting podcast, catch up on emails, and vacuum the floors with my Dyson stick vacuum at the same time. (If you know me, you know how much I love my stick vacuums). But what if I just want to make dinner? What if efficiency is a trick? What if we weren’t actually made to “do it all” and should celebrate our limitations instead of pushing against them constantly. I put a lot of value on making good decisions. From choosing to homeschool our kids seven years ago to starting a weekly small group to scheduling a coffee date… decisions weigh pretty heavily on me because I understand there are sacrifices made with each one. This is where efficiency and technologies tempt me to rely on myself to accomplish as much as possible and meet as many needs as possible in a given day, week, month, and year. I can pretend there is no shadow side and no trade offs when I am operating in this way. But thankfully, I am learning how to acknowledge and grieve the “no’s” while learning to yield and surrender as I make decisions in life. . . the big and small ones. So how should we make decisions about using our time and resources? A lot of us agonize over the big decisions like where to go to school, where to live, what type of job or career should I pursue? We all want to “get it right.” But I think we have to start by asking the question, “How do we know what is good?” We must know what is deeply good in order to not get tricked. Then we can confidently embrace the shadow side or trade offs to our decisions with humility and grace… trusting that God is with us.
I’ve been overwhelmed recently, as I often am this time of year, by the “muchness” and “manyness” of our day. Richard Foster famously said “Our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in “muchness” and “manyness,” he will rest satisfied.” Basically, busyness and efficiency and all the technologies that allow us to accomplish so many things at once are where the devil loves to prowl. If he can’t win us over to immediate death, just keep us busy and distracted, believing it’s all on us to make everything happen… fueled by a steady flow of anxiety and fear. Our enemy, the devil, isn’t creative and doesn’t need to introduce new ways to keep us from our heavenly calling. He simply feeds off of our basic human tendency that began in the garden… to be our own kings and queens on the throne of our lives. Ironically, God did intend for Adam and Eve to rule and reign over the earth. Yet that wasn’t enough. They thought they needed even more freedom, independence, and knowledge… to be like God. But that’s when things got out of whack. We can see how that didn’t work out so well for all of mankind since, yet we still strive for these same things.
God created us to rule and reign with Him and continues to give us freedom to choose. As much as we wish He would speak loud and clear about every decision we must make, He instead invites us to draw near to Him and be formed and refined by a process of trusting, yielding, and walking.
Choosing to homeschool our kids was a pretty natural decision for us at the time. But it was also extremely difficult because I didn’t know anyone else doing it. I had always wanted to, was miserable driving my infant fourth child back and forth from drop offs and pick ups, never knowing what my other kids were doing or learning while away from me. So when my oldest, Ila, finished her 3rd grade year at our sweet Montessori school, we decided it was time to go against the grain. Our lives were becoming more centered around our surf camp in the summers as that became more fruitful. It was time to not have our schedule dictated by a school. Yet I still agonized over that decision. Little did I know, there was no perfect decision. There was simply freedom to prayerfully choose what seemed best, to receive the benefits joyfully and also mourn what we would lose. I didn’t want there to be any tradeoffs. I just wanted there to be the perfect decision that met all our needs perfectly. I often still want this when making decisions. But that wouldn’t require trust in God. That wouldn’t require a process of sanctification and refining.
At this point, I can confidently see why that was the best decision for our kids and our family, yet I sometimes doubt when I see the downside, or shadow side, of how different our lives are from “the norm.” Yes, I am deeply fulfilled by getting to be with our kids every day, (as hard as it is) and they get an amazing experience every summer living in Hatteras. Besides all the fun and beauty, they get to experience the joy of living in a “village,” a small community that relies on one another with the same purpose and heart. This is something vastly missing in our current age where even our closest friends don’t live near us, our church is a twenty minute drive, soccer is forty minutes, etc. etc. We are too spread out, disconnected, and worn out. In recent years, I have been keenly aware that even though the summers are the hardest work running surf camp, my soul is more grounded than any other time. My purpose is clear, my people are clear and consistent, I’m using my body and mind for the sake of a bigger purpose, and others depend on me. Oh and also, my kids are thriving.
But the shadow side of homeschooling and living in two places is also very disheartening at times. There are certain things that are sacrificed for the sake of what we think is better. Our kids don’t have as many friends their exact age, but they have learned to be friends in groups, to be inclusive, and not operate mostly as individuals like most kids in a traditional school setting. They can’t really become star athletes because their seasons have to be shorter than the typical travel sports kid who practices all summer long and attends every camp. If you don’t start an instagram for your child by age 10, then how will colleges see their talent? Accepting our limitations is freeing, yet they can still be painful when we see other kids surpassing ours in athletic arenas. We have to learn to bob and weave, try new ways to keep them active and strong, and let go of the expectations of our current cultural moment. I’m not sure I could survive in the “rat race” anyway, and I’m not sure I want my kids to either.
Yet I still have days when the shadow side feels dark. I question everything. I’m tempted to despair. There is no perfect choice that checks all the boxes. Yet I am learning to see our limitations as a gift, not a curse. We must make the best decisions we can through prayer and by simply looking around and seeing a path. In our case, we have had to forge our own path in a lot of ways, which has felt scary at times. But the benefits and adventure of it has also brought about much joy.
We arrived in Costa Rica for two weeks last month, and as our family approached the customs agent, I was looking at the sign with the questions he was going to ask and pondered my responses in Spanish. “Name? Where are you staying? How long? Return flight?” And finally, “What is your occupation?” My teenaged daughter was also looking at these questions and swiftly came up to me and said “Mom, this is how you say I DO NOTHING in Spanish.” First of all, she was not confident in my ability to answer these questions in the language I have a college minor in, but second of all, she thought the easiest way to describe my occupation was to just say “nada.” Yo no hago nada. Wonderful. Thank you, Ila. To give her the benefit of the doubt, I assume she thought it would be too confusing to explain that I run multiple businesses, homeschool my kids, help lead ministries, and somehow keep food on the table. I feel like I am a CEO of a major corporation just within my own household, yet to the outside world and even to my daughter, “nothing” is easier to say since I do not have one clear job or career path. Again, there is a shadow side to everything. I see friends who have careers or send their kids to school and have multiple hours a day to be BY THEMSELVES. I can’t say that I want that most of the time. But some days that sounds real nice.
So back to my initial questions. How do we know what is good? How do we make decisions when saying yes to one path means saying no to a thousand others? This can be very intimidating if we were all on our own. Jeremiah 6:16 says
“This is what the LORD says: ‘Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.’”
Just going off of this verse, we can notice five things. 1) Look. 2) Ask. 3) Remember what is good. 4) Walk 5) The result is rest for our souls. I’ll go over these briefly in hopes that you can have something practical to take away from my ramblings.
1) Look: I think we can pray and ask God for things without really looking at Him or looking to Him. What does it mean to really look? I think it has something to do with slowing down, quieting our mind, and meditating on who He is. We don’t do this often enough and can easily skip right to the asking.
2) Ask: When we ask God for guidance and wisdom, we are surrendering our ability to know what is good and asking Him to show us a better way. When we come to Him with every little thing, this is an act of trust. He is a good, loving Father who delights in our asking.
3) Remember what is good: When making decisions, it’s important to look back and remember all God has already done and already said. When we ask Him to guide us, we aren’t asking from a blank slate. Look back and remember the ways He answered and guided and provided and take confidence in His intimate involvement in your life.
4) Walk. This is the hardest one because it involves our agency to just walk. It’s also hard because it may require mourning the other directions you’re not walking in, the people you’re not investing in, etc. When we walk in a direction and make choices with our time, we are inevitably saying “no” to a thousand other things. It’s okay to acknowledge and grieve that. Yet we must walk. We must keep going. Sometimes God makes it crystal clear and sometimes it feels like we are on this winding, twisting road when we can only see a few steps ahead. It is in this continual walking out our faith and trust that refines us and shapes us. Perhaps God isn’t as concerned about our specific path, but who we are becoming along the way as we trust and follow Him.
5) The result: rest for our souls. This is something deeply felt and enjoyed when we learn to accept our limitations and take joy in our limited vision. The god of efficiency says to do it ALL and do it all perfectly. Jesus says “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” - Matthew 11:28-30
So let’s embrace our limitations and hold hands with both joy and sorrow in them. When we recognize that God is WITH US in the shadow side, the shadow is no longer dark anyway. We can walk boldly knowing we are never alone. He meets us in our limitations and shortcomings. So take heart. The God of the universe has entered in and overcome the world! It is a blessing to not be ale to do it all. Our limitations are a gift that draws us closer to the heart of God and His actual will for our lives. It’s okay to not know exactly where we are headed when we are walking with Him. We know what is deeply good when we are looking to Him. Because He is good and makes all things good.