Journey Milestones

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Tracy Buller

This past weekend, Sylas graduated from High School. The day before the graduation ceremonies, we held an open house to celebrate Sylas’s accomplishment.

The open house was one of those events that it wasn’t until I was in the midst of it that I realized what this was really all about. The story behind the story. Previous, I had it in my mind that we would invite friends and family to celebrate this milestone in Sylas’s life. Everyone would come, give him a big ol’ pat on the back and congratulate him. In the midst of it, I realized it was that, but it was also…

So.Much.More.

As our house and backyard filled up with friends and family, it dawned on me that every person present had invested in Sylas’s life in some way. Friends who were a part of his life from little on up, relatives who have celebrated every milestone along the way, teachers who have imparted knowledge, youth group leaders, coaches who have been part of character development, peers who have provided accountability and challenge, folks who have prayed, and so much more.

How could I not see this on the front end of planning the open house?

I can be so dense sometimes.

Suddenly, in the midst of the event, I became overwhelmed by the incredible awareness of just how many people have been part of helping Sylas to become the young man that he is. I wished that I had thought of putting a big banner across the entire event to say “Each of you are here because you have invested in Sylas’s life and we are so grateful to you.”

So to all of you who came, and those who couldn’t be with us, let me simply say “Thank you” for your immeasurable contribution to our lives.

Below are some pics from the Open House.

Grandpa and Grandma

My sister in law, Jeannette, and her husband Nathan flew out from Phoenix to be part of the weekend!

Dear friends and former neighbors

Some of Sylas’s good friends: Jaron, Wesley on the left and Nate on the right.

Joelle was a huge help with preparing the food for the open house!

James Buller and Jesse Woodward in the foreground

Reasons To Journal

Posted on June 5, 2013 by Tracy Buller

I was talking with one of my newly graduated students recently and she was telling me that she plans to journal every day for a whole year what she’s learning and experiencing as a novice nurse.

I know it’s strange, but I get super excited, almost giddy, when I find out that someone I know journals, or is starting to journal. My bias is that EVERYONE should journal. It’s just that valuable of a discipline.

These represent 9 years worth of hand written journals before moving to digital journaling.

Here are the reasons that I journal:

1. We think we’ll remember things that we won’t if we don’t write it down. I’ve journaled since I was 12 or so. So much of my life’s thoughts, learnings, struggles, and joys would have been lost to my conscious memory had I not recorded these. It’s fun, for example, to look back now at my thoughts about the impending births of each of our kids. With each kid, I wrote down my sense of who this child might become, and its been amazing to look back and see how accurate that has been.

2. Unedited writing is a healthy way of processing thoughts and emotions. When I don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks of my thoughts and emotions, I can freely express myself. Journaling is cathartic. I can say things as strongly as I want to, and no one gets offended. Then, when I have the real conversation, because I’ve had an outlet for the intense emotion, the conversation just goes better. A friend of mine started journaling about a year ago during a very intense time in her life and recently told me it has made a huge difference in her life as she navigates the pressures of school and family. She just feels so much better.

3. Answers come through writing. I often write down my questions and don’t try to answer them. I just leave them there. In writing. Posed before God in hopes of an answer to come one day. Almost always, if I’m wiling to wait long enough, an answer will come. And then I journal about that, too.

4. Journaling becomes a record of the seasons of our lives. As you get older, this becomes more valuable. It’s so helpful now to be able to go back to earlier journal entries and see more clearly how I was being processed and developed as a person at various points. Kierkegaard said it like this, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Without having some way of recording the present, you will not fully learn from the past.

5. As a discipline. I think its good to have at least one discipline, if not more, that we put into practice and stay with. While I have had seasons lasting up to a few months during which time I have not journaled once, I have always come back to it. I think we are better as people when we find something meaningful to do and stick with it.

How about you? Do you journal? If so, I’d love to hear one reason why you take the time to journal!

Give Mercy, Receive Mercy

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Tracy Buller

We all need a little mercy at times. Or maybe even a lot.

Photo Credit: Charles Buller, taken in the Congo

One of life’s principles is that what you put out into the world, comes back to you. Simply stated, if you treat people poorly, you’ll probably be treated poorly yourself. The reverse is true as well. If you are good to others, people will most likely be good to you.

I’ve been studying through the Sermon on the Mount., and have been struck in particular with Jesus’s words, “Give mercy, receive mercy”.

Mercy suggests being forgiving towards someone to whom it is in your power to hurt or harm. Mercy also motivates compassion and kindness towards others.

One of my strong dislikes is to hear derogatory, critical, or insulting statements directed towards others. It’s easy to be verbally critical of people who fall outside of accepted social boundaries, who “fail” in some way, or who live a life very different from ourselves.

I always tell the kids, and try to model this myself, to never be critical of others because we don’t really know what it’s like to be them. We can’t fully understand why “they”, “those people”, make the choices they do. (Unless we reach out to become friends and then that’s a game changer). For example, criticizing someone who is obese for not being self- controlled when maybe the story behind the story is that food has become a way of numbing the pain of abuse as a child.

Any of us are capable of finding ourselves in a situation someday, if not already, where we are the ones that need mercy.

And if we haven’t given mercy to others throughout our life, I don’t know that we can expect a lot of mercy from others when we need it ourselves.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible is rephrased in the Message version to read:

“Here is a simple, rule of thumb guide for behavior: Ask yourself what you want people to do for you, then grab the initiative and do it for them. Add up God’s Law and Prophets and this is what you get.” (Mt. 7).

Want mercy? Give mercy.

Pieces of Our Lives

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Tracy Buller

We all have pieces of our lives that we don’t know what to do with. Parts of us, or life experiences, that somehow don’t seem to fit nicely into the picture of us. Or what we think the picture of our life should look like. We tend to try to shove those pieces into the backs of our minds, pretending they aren’t there or hoping that somehow with time those parts will simply fade away. These pieces often represent what we consider the failures of our lives, or at least somewhere that we somehow missed it.

Maybe a relationship that has been broken, a career lost, a dream unrealized, a potential we didn’t live up to, etc.

Here’s an example from my life. When I stepped down from pastoring and took a sabbatical, there were dear people at the church I served who left. These were people that I had invested in and cared a lot about. Some of these folks haven’t done so well after leaving the church and I often feel somehow responsible. I can tell myself all of the right things but at the end of the day, this feels like a piece of my life that I don’t know what to do with.

You can probably identify your own pieces.

This morning I read this from the Book of Psalms: ”Yahweh made my life complete when I placed all the pieces before him.” And later in the same chapter, “Yahweh rewrote the text of my life when I opened the the book of my heart to his eyes.” (Psalm 18)

Sometimes I think that’s all we can do- lay it all out before Yahweh. The good, the bad and the ugly. We all have that stuff.

I do believe deeply in my heart that somehow God puts the pieces together and makes something beautiful of it. Our part is to own it, and to lay all of the pieces of our lives before him. Not just some of them, or the ones we like the best ,or the pieces that make us look good, but ALL of them.

The promise and the hope is that Yahweh puts it all together into something beautifully complete. No more pieces, but a beautiful whole.

Photo Credit: Worldview Photography, Doug Fike. I saw this picture just after I had been thinking about the pieces of our lives and how God puts it all together into something beautiful

Availability

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Tracy Buller

[This is a guest post from a friend of mine, Diana Gonzalez. I asked her if I could share this for two reasons: 1) to encourage those of you who are available to others- you make a difference! and 2) for those of you in the crazy years, know that there are people like Diana out there! There's hope for you. We had people like Diana in our lives, which made all the difference in the world.]

I remember the hard years – decades, really – of raising four kids with a traveling husband, a full-time teaching job & college courses at night. It was a marathon at top speed and I don’t quite remember how I managed to breathe. I do remember the giant desktop blotter hung on the kitchen wall to desperately track the minivan craziness of volleyball/soccer/swimming/dance/scouts/rehearsals/Dad’s travel schedule/ad nauseam. But there was a grace for that season, although I can no longer conjure it up.

Then came the emotional, tumultuous bottleneck of launching them all into their adult lives, with attendant hopes/setbacks/heartaches. And then …

… quiet. We squeezed out the other side of the bottleneck. We had achieved lift-off The house emptied of drama and dirt. The financial hemorrhage stopped. I was profoundly free of so many, many, erstwhile non-negotiable pressures.

After dabbling for a season in professional stuff, I’m on the other side of the Year of Me and finding that I’ve settled into a season of Availability. This is my new job title. It is so wonderful and sexy I can hardly believe the Lord I serve is letting me get away with this. I’m blogging about it because I want to defend it.

The Gift of Availability is the freedom to move from being task-driven to being relation-driven. I can show up. I can be present. My calendar is not overrun with obligations cast in merciless stone. I’m out of the rat race. I can say yes, sure, I’d be happy to. What a sweet pleasure it is to hear the relief in the voices of my family and friends when they just need a little extra push of energy for an overwhelming task or a break from the kids so they can breathe, or someone who can suddenly substitute teach, or someone to just pitch in somehow.

It took me a while to get over the embarrassment of having no answer to the question “So what do you do now?” But someone has to have margins, free time, flexibility. I remember having none. The world and the Body of Christ need people who are Just. Available. Those “random acts of kindness” from our counterculture mantra have become my daily bread. It’s like having a golden goose of mercy that lays me an egg to share every day.

And it’s certainly random, and that’s super-OK with freedom-junkie me. I’m never stuck in a grind, I’m not married to any particular obligation, so it’s always interesting without bogging down. And I get Rock Star status for seeming to be so amazingly generous, when it actually feels like I’m cheating.

So, my friends, if someone you know has managed to get to that point in life where survival is not front and center on their agenda, think twice before urging them into some world-changing, status-laden, fraught-with-global-implications trajectory. It may be that God is reassigning them from protagonist to supporting-actor status, to be the lubrication in other people’s weary existences, the cheerful help for others’ challenges, the random companionship in an inhumane, frenzied, brutal culture. And when you get a chance, high-five my husband for releasing me to this.

Availability is truly a gift, and it can be a job description.

Influence Up

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Tracy Buller

I have a few blogs that I follow because they help me to keep growing and learning. For encouragement and challenge in writing, I follow Jeff Goins. For creating a platform and intentional leadership, Micheal Hyatt. For spiritual insight and challenge, Richard Rohr. And for great life principles, Seth Godin.

A recent post by Seth Godin reminded me of a life principle I had forgotten which is that of leading up. I use the language of Influencing Up. I hadn’t actually forgotten the principle itself, I just haven’t specifically used the language or brought it to my conscious awareness for a while.

Photo Credit: Worldview Photography, Doug Fike

We often think of influencing our peers, or those we mentor. We often don’t think so much about influencing upward. Influencing up means that we positively influence those who are over us- our bosses, supervisors, coaches, teachers, older siblings, and so on. Godin’s post, Lead Up, reminded me that part of personal leadership is influencing those above us.

Right now, two of our kids are in challenging situations where if things are going to change, they will need to step up and influence up. They will need to be the change they wish to see.

After reading Godin’s post, I had a better handle on helping them see how they can influence upward in a way that might bring about positive change. Rather than quitting, running, accepting status quo, or ignoring problems that seem out of your control, influencing upwards can be empowering. And it can be effective in bringing about good change. There are healthy, positive ways to move beyond “that’s just the way it is.”

What’s important to you? Are you staying resourced so that you can continue to grow and become the best you can be? Maybe you are passionate about parenting. Find a great parenting resource that you can tap into regularly. Whatever it is you care about, find ways to keep growing, learning and staying sharp.

I’m glad I took the time to read Godin’s post. It wasn’t just one more thing to read or do, it was part of helping me to be a better parent that day.

30 Day Challenge: Hi-Lo

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Tracy Buller

I took this picture at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Pennsylvania

May’s 30 Day Challenge is to identify the bright spot and the shadow of each day and look for the small ways that I experienced God in both. I’ll call this the Hi and Lo of each day for lack of a better term.

Behind my desire to reflect on the highs and lows is an ancient spiritual practice referred to as The Examen. Charles and I did an abbreviated version of The Examen with the kids when they were really young. We’d light a candle before bedtime and each share, in our own way, what the best part of the day was and the part we didn’t like. And then we’d talk to God about it all.

The discipline is meaningful in that it causes me to pause, and think back over the day. Otherwise, the days can easily blur into one after another. In the reflection, I also try to see how God was present in it all. So here’s the first week….

Monday, May 1st:

Experienced a deep sense of awe and gratitude around the beauty of the fresh, spring day.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed at all that needs to yet be done at the house we’re renovating to flip and lacking the motivation (and time) to work on it.

Thursday, May 2:

Celebrated Sylas’s 18th birthday, on the same day as the Academic Honors Banquet for those with GPAs higher than 3.7 in which we participated.

Got in touch with the grief associated with the endings/ new beginnings of Sylas’s graduation and then off to college next fall. Overall it was a roller-coaster of emotions kind of day.

Friday, May 3:

A good friend helped me to understand the meaning of a recent event that I sensed held some greater significance but I just couldn’t see it on my own. Breakthrough moment.

Sat through a high school baseball game that was nothing short of painful to watch as kids have lost their confidence and love of the game.

Saturday, May 4:

Got my mother in law moved to a nursing care facility where she will get more help with her daily needs.

Got a call around midnight that she being transferred to the hospital for breathing difficulties, which turned out to be pneumonia.

Sunday, May 5:

Going out for breakfast as a family and while not everyone was in a good mood, it was a gift to be together even like this.

Today was so busy that it ended up not being a day of rest at all; I’m not feeling very refreshed for a new week.

Monday, May 6:

Got together with a good friend with a big call on her life who understands, lives out and models Christ Centered leadership. Love the synergy of like minded friendships.

Said good-bye to Jeannette, my sister in law, who came out initially to help Gladys adjust to her new living environment, only to spend most of her time being with Gladys in the hospital.

Tuesday, May 7:

I’ve had a sense that I’m to be on the look out for little surprises lately and today received a gift card in the mail from someone as a Thank You. (God does stuff like this to encourage us and to simply say “I love you!”)

Disappointed in myself that I sometimes don’t know when to back off of something I feel strongly about.

Wednesday, May 8:

Proud of my senior nursing students as they are stepping up to new challenges in the clinical setting. So fun to be with them as they grow and expand as people and as soon to be RNs.

Gladys has taken a turn for the worse with her breathing and now abdominal pain.

Thursday, May 9:

I love that I can call my parents and check in with them often. Still, at this age, I value that connection more than ever.

Had many difficult decisions to make as a family regarding Gladys. It’s difficult to see this vibrant lady in the state she is right now.

If you’ve never tried using The Examen as a framework for prayer and reflection, I encourage you to give it a run! I linked to a post above that I thought gave some helpful background on it.

Tears in the Card Isle

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Tracy Buller

Today is Sylas’s 18th birthday. So, I was at the store this morning looking through birthday cards. We don’t usually buy birthday cards, but today I was curious to see what all was there for sons.

After looking through several different cards, I was drawn to one of a baby being cradled in someone’s arms. On the front it said,

“Gone are the days when I held you in my arms….”

And on the inside,

“But I will always, always, hold you in my heart.”

Suddenly I’m standing there in the isle with big tears streaming down my face. In truth, it was more than just a few tears. I was crying.

Parenting is by far the most rewarding, challenging, joyful, adventurous, intentional, exhausting, exhilarating thing I have ever done. Even today, as I’m filled with so much joy and pride for who Sylas is and is becoming, there’s also a certain sorrow as I think of this person, whom I used to cradle in my arms, leaving home to go to school next fall.

And I’m thinking about all of those years in between, feeling happy for each day, yet sad that those days are gone.

Today, I am so thankful for every minute we have spent with Sylas. As a little kid we spent hours exploring nature as we walked through parks and paths. Well, I walked and he ran. But anyways, we combed every inch of our backyard, neighborhood and local parks. We read books together, painted and made lots of stuff, built lego creations together, spent time with friends from church, and made trips to the grandparents house and all over the world.

As Sylas grew, it seems like alot of our time with him was spent watching him play sports, starting already with pee wee soccer and t-ball, and then to baseball and tennis in High School. Other than maybe missing 1 or 2 events, at least one of us has always been there, front row, cheering him on and believing in him.

We haven’t been perfect parents by a long shot. There are things that I would do differently, or even do over if I could. But on this day, I am so grateful for Sylas, who he is becoming, and the gift that he is.

I will always, always, hold him closely in my heart.

Happy Birthday, Son.

Congo Motorbike Trip, Summer 2012

Back in the day!

30 Day Challenge: May

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Tracy Buller

Try something new for 30 days!

My goal at the beginning of the year was to do twelve different 30 Day Challenges. The month of January I did a daily photo challenge, which simply meant that I took a photo every day of something very characteristic of our lives. Did that, and it was very good. You can read about it here.

February, I began a 30 Day Wheat Free Challenge. I began to see some positive changes in my health, and since I had momentum going I continued it into March. And April. Being wheat free turned into 90 days, and now it’s a habit that I plan to continue indefinitely because of the positive health changes I am experiencing.

The fact that I ended up making an important personal discovery through a 30 Day Challenge, like being wheat free, confirms to me the importance of at least trying new things. You never know what you might learn, see, experience or discover through trying something new for 30 Days.

May’s 30 Day Challenge is to record the bright spot and the low point, or in other words, a joy and a sorrow, for each day.

This is part of Joelle’s 30 Day Challenge plan

Joelle, my 13 year old daughter, is doing 30 days of “Clean Eating”. She is not eating any junk/ processed food. She started the day off today with making a mango, spinach, banana and OJ shake. That’s a bold 30 day challenge if you ask me!

I plan to post weekly the daily high/low summaries.

What 30 Day Challenge have you tried and how did it go? I would love to hear!

What Spring Reminds Us

Posted on April 14, 2013 by Tracy Buller

In one of the classes I teach, the topic has been that of loss, grief and death lately. Most of the students in the class are under the age of 30 and if they are at all like me at that age, death was a topic to be avoided. More of an annoyance to deal with than anything.

When I was younger, I saw death as a final event. We live our lives, and then we die. The real event, the true story, is found in the living. Dying is simply a tragic inconvenience.

As I’ve aged and hopefully matured, I see things differently than I used to. I’ve come to see that life itself- the living that we do- is a series of deaths and losses. (At an earlier point in my life, I would have stopped reading this post right now if I hadn’t written it myself!) And these unavoidable deaths throughout our lives are not to be seen as set backs and detours, but are to be embraced as part of the path towards maturity and growth.

I’m an “upward and onward” kind of person, always looking ahead to the potential for growth and expansion, greater development of gifts, steadily moving into the “more” that lies ahead. While all that is good, what I really didn’t see or understand earlier in life is just how much of the most transformative growth happens through setbacks, deaths, falls and failures.

Life itself is a steady climb forward, but as Richard Rohr says, “Like skaters, we move forward by actually moving from side to side… and now we are finding [this pattern] mirrored rather clearly in the whole universe, and especially in physics and biology, which is one huge pattern of entropy; constant loss and renewal, death and transformation, the changing of forms and forces.”

While no one really loves the difficulty that losses and death bring to our lives, it does at least help me to realize that there can be a purpose to those times. We do grow and develop as people when we can embrace the losses as opportunities for transformation.

Spring is a meaningful reminder of this principle. On the other side of loss and death, there is the promise of new.

Below are some pictures I took today from our backyard:

Traveling Clues

More clues, less rules, for life's journey

Journey Milestones

Reasons To Journal

Give Mercy, Receive Mercy

Pieces of Our Lives

Availability

Influence Up

30 Day Challenge: Hi-Lo

Tears in the Card Isle

30 Day Challenge: May

What Spring Reminds Us

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