Tag: challenges

The Joy of the Journey (aka The 10 Minute Nerf War)

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 3 Comments

For weeks, preparations, planning, and discussions about design and strategy took place. Something big was on the horizon, and my son and his good buddy were afire with how they wanted it to happen. The amount of time they dedicated to preparation was noteworthy—and so was the fun they had in doing it.

The event? A neighborhood Nerf war. A bunch of boys picked a date to have a shootout to decide who was #1 in the Nerf world on our street. The last man standing would be the winner. The boys wanted to make sure they were prepared, and so they really got into it. My son wanted to buy a $30 vest that would hold his Nerf gear. After he heard a very clear and resounding “no” that definitely had the tone of “are you out of your flippin’ mind?” he realized he needed to follow his father’s and my suggestion to create what he needed. What followed was a wonderful think tank of my son and his friend. I just loved watching their imaginations catch fire. They did indeed come up with some very clever answers to their needs, and they were proud of their handiwork.

After a few weeks of strategizing and creating, they were ready. It was finally the afternoon of the showdown. This is where all of their hard work was leading…

 

Nerf

 

Ready…aim…fire!

It was over in ten minutes.

Who won is not important. (Okay, it was my kid.) They kind of giggled at how fast it all went down—but there was no regret in any of it. Not in the time they took to prepare or the speed in which it all culminated…Because all of it was fun.

As kids, so much of the fun is in the planning and anticipating. The actual thing is often secondary. I’m sometimes guilty of keeping my kid on a “need to know” basis (usually because I just forget), but he has told me that he wishes I would tell him about things earlier so that he is not only aware of it but can look forward to it, too. So I’m trying to remember not to be so scatterbrained (a bit of a catch-22) so that my son can have more joy of anticipation. And I think his desire for that is wonderful.

I can remember plenty of times when I was a kid where the figuring out and the setting up was so much of the fun—sometimes the main part. My friend Jen and I would decide we were going “camping,” so we would engineer a make-shift tent with a tarp and poles—we never much went for the store bought stuff because…what fun was that? And we would finally get it all set up and hang out in it just for a bit before it was time to take it all down and go in for dinner. And that was just fine with us.

 

a classic blanket fort
a classic blanket fort from a few years back

 

I remember one time my sister and I were building forts in our basement. There were different sections to the basement, and one of them was a nice little room with a TV and a couple sofas. She claimed she wanted that space, so of course, I wanted it, too. I felt so victorious when she gave in and said I could have it. Ah-HA! I got the great room! And so I flopped on the sofa and watched some TV…but I could hear my sister very busy on the other end of the basement. I peeked over in curiosity and saw that she had half of the Ping-Pong table down and had covered it with blankets. Light was emanating from underneath. I had to go check it out. Sure enough, my sister had built an awesome fort with its own groovy light and everything! My victory was hollow…the real fun was had in building the fort and then hanging out in it. Being the generous sister, though, she did let me look inside her fort to see how cool it was, but then she told me I had to go back to my place. Ah, big sisters…

Certainly there are plenty of times where the destination is by far the biggest slice of the pie, but even then we must not forget the journey. Yes, a long car ride to an amusement park or a nerve-wracking flight to vacation may not be the best of journeys to savor, but they still merit appreciation.

 

map

 

A life lived in the “are we there yet?” mentality will mean that only bits and pieces of life will truly be lived and enjoyed.

That is simply not enough.

If you read my recent crossroads post, you know that I am at the beginning of a journey in which I do not know the destination. Naturally, as an adult with responsibilities, this puts a ton of additional stress on me. But even during this anxious time, I know I need to be more like the kid I was who truly felt the value of the dream as the dream…of the journey as the destination.

If all I do is look and pray for the end game, then I may once again find myself quickly maneuvering for the basement TV room rather than the wonderful Ping-Pong fort.

And this time around…I really want to enjoy building the fort.

 

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Standing at a Crossroads

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 14 Comments

My husband and I have an unspoken list of movies that we see over and again, particularly late at night when we should be mature and get some rest, but instead we watch the last hour of Braveheart or Shawshank Redemption. It’s a codependent sickness—or gift—depending on your perspective.

One of those movies is Cast Away. I’m going to assume most of you have seen it at this point, but if you haven’t and intend to, then…what are you waiting for? The movie is 14 years old. Consider this a spoiler alert, because I am going to talk about the ending of the movie.

After four years keeping himself alive on a deserted island, in large part keeping the will to live by remembering his fiancé back home, Tom Hanks’ character, Chuck Noland, is rescued only to find that his fiancé has moved on…like marriage-with-another-guy and already-has-a-child moved on. Sometimes I want to slap Helen Hunt. All that in four years? As it turns out, she loves Chuck, but she’s not leaving her marriage.

 

map

 

Chuck now has to figure out what this new—and very different—world holds for him, and he drives off not knowing at all what that may be. Near the very end of the movie, he is standing—literally—at a crossroads. It is a wide open space from which to decide. He gets a little bit of a nudge when the beautiful woman who belongs to the last package he delivered stops and lets him know where each road leads. His smile indicates that he just may choose the same one that she heads down.

 

you are here_w dot

 

I was pretty young when I recognized that my life was meant to be lived in chapters, particularly in my work life. I realized it is just who I am. Several chapters have already been written, but now, I, too, stand at a crossroads.

This crossroads was not one I headed toward on my own, and so I can relate to Hanks’ character looking into the vast unknown and scratching his head.

I’m no longer in my 20s with my life ready to unfold…there’s been plenty of unraveling already. But…so what? What does that really mean? I love the quote that writer Connie Schultz shared about a friend of hers who was going into med school at 42. People said to her, “but you’ll be 50 by the time you are a doctor…” Her response? “I’m going to be 50 someday anyway. I may as well be 50 and a doctor.”

Time is all in how you approach it, right?

Of course, there is no promise of tomorrow.

Just last night I was looking over a tribute page on Facebook of those from my high school class who are no longer with us. Well over a dozen—and that’s just the ones that were shared on the tribute page. Lives cut short from what we assume to be an “average” life span. But no one’s life is average.

You really can’t assume you have an allotted amount of time in this world, and that’s why I get so frustrated with myself when I feel as though I am letting it slip away.

 

clock of life

 

Time is the great leveler. Some people are rich, some poor, some quick-minded, some fleet of foot. But everyone gets exactly 24 hours in a day (or 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.0916 seconds for you literalists out there). What we do with our equal allotment is up to us.

So…which road to take? In fact, where are the roads?

The white noise that floods my head on a daily basis makes it a little challenging to figure out what my next right step is, but I am searching for the quiet in order to better hear the Answer to which path is meant for me.

If God could program my GPS, that would help, but so far he hasn’t worked that way. So far he has given me an internal compass that I need to follow. I just need to pull away from the metal interference that is jamming my reading, and perhaps then I’ll see my true north.

For each of us who face one kind of a crossroads or another, the decisions that must come from it are often not easy to make. The more you have traveled, the more baggage (both good and bad) you carry. The more baggage, the more to consider. The more to consider, the more complicated the choice. But while it is not easy, it is a choice that must be made—otherwise you will simply be left in the middle of the road scratching your head. And sooner or later, you’re going to get hit by a truck and who wants that?

And so I find myself staring at my map and figuring out my direction.

It is indeed a journey—and one I am blessed to travel—even when the path remains yet to be seen. 

 

 “…I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

~Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in Cast Away

 

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Perfect Imperfection

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 2 Comments

It may be fair to say that I have a teensy bit of a tendency to be a perfectionist. It may also be fair to say that the older I get, the more I realize what a futile situation I create for myself in striving to do things perfectly.

I have, however, found one thing I am absolutely perfect at: imperfection. I’ve got it nailed. Fall short every day? Check. Lack discipline? Check. Disappoint people? Check. Miss the mark? Check. Make mistakes? Check.

I’m all over this imperfection thing.

If I would have known how perfect I could be at imperfection when I was in my 20s and 30s, I could have saved myself a whole lot of struggle.

As life turns knowledge into wisdom, I have learned that the desire for perfection is actually quite evil. It is what undercuts effort due to fear of failure. Creative sparks die in the wind of perfection. Dreams get minimized if they seem unattainable…and minimized dreams are not dreams at all, but consolation prizes.

To be clear, I’m not embracing purposefully doing things poorly, but I am embracing the idea that fearing you might do something poorly is no reason not to try. I’ve failed a lot lately, and…I’m still here. That alone speaks to the myth of perfectionism. Perhaps perfectionism is just ego wrapped up in a pretty package.

 

No longer perfect, but still serves its purpose
No longer perfect, but still serves its purpose

 

As I think about this, I am reminded of my days on my college softball team. Now there is a lesson in embracing imperfection.

To set the scene just a bit, the transition from slow pitch to fast pitch for girls’ softball happened when I began high school. That meant that until I was a freshman, the only softball I had ever played was slow pitch. When I went to the orientation meeting for my high school team, I was so put off by the coach that I decided I didn’t even want to try out for the team…so I never learned to play fast pitch. (By the way—deciding to let the coach’s personality be the reason I didn’t try out was a stupid, short-sighted decision on my part. Ah, youth…)

Fast forward to college. Some girls from the school’s softball team were encouraging me to try out for the coming season’s team. I told them that I had no experience with fast pitch, but they said it didn’t matter—that no one would be cut from tryouts because they simply needed enough girls to form a team and let the university fulfill its Division I status. No risk in that, right? So I decided to go to tryouts…where there had to be at least one hundred girls attempting to make the team. So much for no cuts.

 

mitt

 

As long as I was there, I thought, what the heck? I’ll give it a shot. Thankfully, my old abilities came back to me, and my fielding skills were pretty tight. But next was batting…

Since tryouts were in late winter, they were indoors. This meant that the batting portion of the tryouts was a pitching machine firing out whiffle softballs…and…I crushed them. I mean…I impressed myself. Piece of cake, I thought. Maybe this fast pitch wasn’t so hard after all.

And then spring came.

My first at bat in the lovely outdoors went something like this: I stood in the batter’s box and waited for the pitcher to throw the ball…only she already had. It was so fast, I barely computed its whizzing by me. And whizzing by me. And whizzing by me. I would try to swing and be so behind the pitch it was laughable—except to my coach. He looked at me with a “please tell me you aren’t seriously this bad/how did you get on the team/there is no way I can remediate you at this point” look on his face.

I did, however, achieve perfection that season—a perfect .000 for my batting average. The coach did use me as a utility player when he needed one, but if my memory serves me correctly, I struck out every time at bat. Every. Time.

 

bat 2

 

At tryouts, I had no idea how poor of a fast pitch batter I would be. I had no idea how quickly I was barreling toward gaping imperfection. I had no idea how humbling it would be to go from a worthy player to one who pretty much accidentally made the team.

But I survived, and so did the team. And we had a whole lot of fun that season.

And I would do it all over again.

Of course, back then, I didn’t have the perspective of this lesson of imperfection. I just had the frustration of sucking at batting. But it was an important piece of the puzzle that would help me to eventually realize that I would have rather been on the team and struggled than not have been on the team at all.

Being perfect at imperfection is freeing. It takes the pressure off. It opens up possibilities because you know that if you strike out, you’ll live to play another day. And who doesn’t want to play another day?

In fact…I think a brand new game is starting…

 

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Blindsided

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 14 Comments

Have you ever been driving merrily along when out of nowhere, a car smashes right into you? I have. I was the front-seat passenger in a car that was hit on my side—in fact, for a split second, I saw what was coming and yelled, “We’re going to get hi…!”

WHAM!

 

warning

 

Thankfully the impact was just behind my door, but we were propelled through the intersection—doing a huge donut and landing yards away. My head slammed into the window, but mercifully the glass didn’t shatter.

The whole experience left me shaken and in a daze.

That’s what getting blindsided can do to you.

It’s like when an anvil falls on Wile E. Coyote’s head and the little birdies tweet around him while he tries to re-inflate and shake off his stupor.

Rarely do you get a glimpse of it heading toward you (as I did with the car crash), but even if you do, it’s not enough to prepare you for the impact. For the shock. For the damage. For the hurt.

 

hazard

 

Whether it’s an accident, a devastating diagnosis, a breakup, or a job loss, getting blindsided hurts in more ways than the obvious. Not only do you have to deal with the initial trauma of the incident, but there is the ripple effect of life being different from that point on.

Even when the blindsiding has less of an overall impact, it still leaves its mark. Thankfully there were no significant injuries in the car crash I was in, and the damage was mostly financial. But the way that I flinch whenever a car comes too close has never left me. The insurance may have helped rebuild the car—but my mind still has residual damage.

 

mirror

 

Major blindsidings ripple even more. Things that you believed to be one way are now another. And because the blow comes out of nowhere, there is no chance for goodbyes to what once was. It just is. In a split second, the world as you know it is very different. One way Monday, and then heartbreakingly different on Tuesday.

And there’s no going back. No reclaiming of the pre-impact reality. You just have to find a new way to navigate. To get back up. To heal. To let the little birdies swirling about your head fly away and hope for some clarity to settle in.

 

books

 

At the start of summer last year, my husband came home from work in the middle of the day, and after saying a quick hello to our son, he gestured for to me to follow him into the bedroom. I laugh now to think that the thing that crossed my mind then was that he was excited to share good news with me…a bonus? Vacation? After all, we really needed some good news. My mom had just come back home to live with us after a debilitating illness, and we were now grappling with how to care for her. The anticipation built within seconds, and then he said…“I just lost my job.” I thought he was kidding. As far as we knew, everything was going well in that realm—there was nothing that even intimated that his job was less than secure. But no…it was real.

Seriously, God? Hadn’t I just prayed to you a night or two ago that I didn’t know how much more I could handle? Is this your answer?

WHAM.

None of it made sense, and it hurt like hell. The sense of betrayal was strong, as someone he considered a friend had given him no warning before he turned our lives upside down. It wasn’t just the loss of income that hurt, but the loss of faith…the trust of believing that if you were loyal and worked hard, you would be treated fairly. Gone in an instant.

 

tire

 

Time passed, we caught our breath, and the little birdies eventually flew away. And after much thought and prayer, we believed God was pointing us toward my husband opening his own architectural firm. And that’s how this particular Phoenix rose from those specific ashes. Though the business is still gaining traction, we feel it was indeed our next right step to take. (And if anyone needs a wonderful architect…I have one for you!)

And as you may have guessed from the timing of this post, the little birdies are swirling about us once more.

Another experience extremely similar to my husband’s work situation…but this time for me.

WHAM.

Life has taught me that we will eventually catch our breath and figure out our next right step. But for now, I am in the midst of trying to shake off my own daze from the blow and wondering how it could happen to us again. How what I thought I could have faith in, I no longer can.

I’ve never been one to think I have life figured out, and time and again I get reminders of that very truth. All I can do is have faith that God has something better in store for me, and then look to find it.

For a while, though, I may have to put some sunflower seeds out for those little birdies swirling about me, as they don’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.

 

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Shut the Door and Teach

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 4 Comments

Do you ever feel like some days life is really just a big dodgeball game and you’re the only one left on your side of the court? Balls flying everywhere and all you can do is run around like Phoebe from Friends until the inevitable happens and you get pummeled from numerous angles?

 

dball4

 

Okay, maybe it’s not that intense, but too often outside forces can lead us to lose sight of our true purpose.

When I taught, my fellow teachers and I had to deal with an onslaught of issues from the administration. It was, quite frankly, often hard to swallow, as those who were telling us what we needed to do in the classroom had either never taught before, or had a year or two of teaching physical education under their belts before moving over to administration. I’m pretty sure a surgeon wouldn’t be thrilled with a first or second year resident telling her how to operate. But I digress.

 

 

With the swirl of outside forces clouding my vision, I used to tell myself this one thing to remember why I was there:

Shut the door and teach.

After all, that was my true purpose. I didn’t get into education for the politics of it all—I became a teacher because of my love of learning and wanting to share that with my students in the hopes that they, too, might also fall in love with it—or at least fall in like with it. Ever the realist, I am.

 

bookd

 

Just shut the door and teach—because that is why you are here. This is your purpose, your calling—and don’t let yourself get mired down in the morass of what is flung at you from those outside forces.

Along my life’s journey, I have had other callings, and still the same mantra holds true. While I’m no longer in the classroom, I still need to remind myself to shut the door and teach, in whatever adaptation that means.

 

door

 

No matter what my purpose is, I need to shut out the (often negative) distractions and zone in on what I can do to make a difference.

Even within our personal lives, we need to remember to shut the door and teach, so to speak. After all, we can really rip ourselves apart when we lose sight of our core purpose: to love one another.

Really…isn’t that just it? God calls us to love him and one another. Period.

 

verse

 

We are not called to feel poorly because our house isn’t just the way we want it or our kid doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that seemingly everyone else does. We are not called to be caught up in the “stuff” of this world.

We are not called to be the answer to every unfolding drama that comes our way or every problem dropped in our laps. Sure, we are to do our best and take responsibility appropriately, but it needs to be in keeping with our purpose—not derailing us from it.

Just shut the door and teach…and love.

Of course, this doesn’t make the distractions and negatives disappear. We all know better than that. After all, the administration kept right on with their form of educational dodgeball. And bills won’t pay themselves. And crises still come our way. Life will still send us ducking and dodging, but we are hopefully more fulfilled because we keep our focus through it all. (Or at least on most days. Still the realist.)

So for all of us who from time to time feel pummeled by the world around us, I hope you are able to do your own version of shutting the door and teaching…of remembering your calling and keeping those that have a habit of putting obstacles in your way in their proper place.

Remember what you came for…and then do it.

The 9/6 Perspective

~ Lisa Ancona-Roach ~ 2 Comments

There are few times when a finger is pointed at you that it’s a good thing. Maybe you’re getting picked for a game of kickball or maybe you’ve raised your hand to be chosen for Let’s Make a Deal…but usually a finger aimed at you is a call-out of some sort.

Merriam Webster defines it as “the act of blaming someone for a problem instead of trying to fix or solve it; the act of making explicit and often unfair accusations of blame.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting exhausted with our culture of finger-pointing.

finger away

The polarization of society is something that really hurts my heart. Be it politics, religion—any number of social issues—people are so busy being adamantly, unwaveringly “right” and often just denigrating and denying the other side’s perspective, that our world is filled with hatred and so-called “righteousness.”

angry

When I taught high school English, one of the exercises I created to try to get students ready for a healthy debate was what I called the 9/6 Perspective. (I had to put the numbers in that order because calling it the 6/9 Perspective would cause too much giggling in a room full of teenagers).

The exercise was very simple. I wrote a figure boldly on a piece of paper, set it on a desk, and had all of the students circle around. Then I’d have two students stand on either side of the desk and tell me what they understood to be written on the paper. Without fail, one would say “a 9” and the other would say “a 6.”

9-6

I’d ask them “Are you sure?”

“I know my numbers, Ms. Ancona….”

“Of course I know a 6 when I see one…”

They were certain of the facts in front of them.

Then I would ask the rest of the class, “Well….who’s right?”

This would result in multiple voices speaking up…”They both are!” “It depends!” “If you’re on either side, it looks right!”

And so on…And eventually we would put words around the reality that each “side” saw their own truth—though the answers were completely different.

But it was still their truth.

How you see things matters. Where you’re coming from matters.

And the same goes for the other person.

Now don’t think I see myself as righteous in this respect—my own stances can be passionate for sure (ask me about equal rights, gun laws, or preaching love over law and be ready for an impassioned response)—but I know that when we shut the other side down with scorn and disdain, we simply grow farther apart when the real challenge is learning to live together.

Acknowledging and listening doesn’t mean agreeing or embracing. To listen to a 6 when you are a fervent 9 doesn’t mean they win or you give in, but it hopefully brings the debate to a healthier level where opinions are offered without calling names or spewing hatred.

The ease with which we can “plant our flags” and take stands on Facebook and Twitter has only made the situation worse. It always saddens me so when I see someone share their hatred of “the other side” in a post, and then see the “likes” and comments that follow.

unfollow

Before the ease of social media to share such things, the circles of disdain or hatred were smaller—or at least more under the radar. Now people share how others “disgust” them right after they post what a great time they had at the beach.

I think we can be better.

The person who sees a 9 when you know a 6 is right is still…a person. So while we can hold tight to our belief in 6, let’s not just be “disgusted” by the 9-seer. Let’s instead work toward what we might be able to do to get that person to walk over to our side of the desk and see the 6. Or maybe we need to do the very same to see their 9. And maybe when we’ve done that neither side will have budged a bit, but at least we might better understand why they believe in what they do.

Hand Reaching

I don’t mean to simplify life’s complex issues and people.

I know it’s not easy to extend grace when we are passionately entrenched on an issue…

…but I believe it’s what we are called to do.

And I very much believe in what the late, great Maya Angelou said time and again: “We are more alike than we are unalike.”

And if we look at one another that way rather than with contempt, we just might have ourselves a better world to live in.