Dear friend,

 

I was a new believer working my very first summer job. It was a greenhouse, and I spent my afternoons lugging water-soaked flats of petunias to different parts of the business. Most of my time was spent in the humid home of red geraniums, but sometimes I worked in the parking lot, where all the perennials were potted. The smell of soil, water, and sun is still one of my favorites, and the physical labor of the job left me satisfied at the end of the day. 

 

When I'd be out in the parking lot moving hibiscus and yew bushes around, I'd look across the street where the forest rolled upward into hills north of Harbor Springs and quote Psalm 121: 

 

 

A breath prayer. Just a momentary pause in the middle of my run-of-the-mill job and teenage life. But I remember it now, almost twenty years later, and I still pause some mornings and whisper the same words, eyes on different hills.

 

Psalm 121 is a clarion call to those surrounded by temporal places to fix their eyes. We are constantly tempted to look down: down at our phones, down at our to-do list, down at the pressing needs and stresses of our lives. But Psalm 121 tells us to look up. At fifteen, I didn't need help with much. Of course, everything seemed enormous through my teenage eyes: my future uncertain, my path unplanned. But the habit of lifting my eyes, formed at fifteen, has followed me in the two decades since and has formed the way I see Christ. 

 

Last week I said something most of you have heard me say quite often – but it was new to a few of you. I said that everything you see – a sunset, a beautiful flower, the light filtering through fog, the smile of a baby – can be taken as a personal gift from your loving God. Someone asked me: How do you know? 

 

I know because He says so: Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1, Matt. 6:26, Is. 55:12, Col. 1:16, Rom. 5:8, 1 John 3:1. And I know because He is good. And I know because He is kind. And I know because I experience Him every day in the little things, and by seeing His personal love in all of them, I have zero doubt in my mind that's present for the big things, too.

Recently a psychologist I follow on Instagram stated that those prone to anxiety or depression must keep watch over their thought patterns and consciously re-route AWAY from worst-case-scenario thoughts. Specifically, he said to look for three positive things about each person you meet rather than defaulting to their negative qualities. This builds on something I heard from Dr. Matthew Sleeth, who speaks extensively on suicide prevention from a biblical and medical perspective. He pointed out that the media we consume has a direct impact on the health of our thought patterns. This seems like a no-brainer (we know most media has damaging effects) but many of us think we are the exception to the rule; we can handle it.

 

But we can't handle it. Before long in the media of our modern age, we're eyes down on the anxiety, the worry, the darkness, the negative. I know this pattern myself. I've had to actively retrain my mind to look for the good, especially in people (especially when people online often prove themselves the opposite of what I hope!). But God says: Lift up your eyes. Take Me personally.   

So I do.

 

And after years and years of doing this, years and years of seeing His personal love, I no longer struggle on the daily to see the good in people or the good in my day or the good in my husband. I know there is good, there WILL be good, because my eyes are up, not down. 

 

I began to learn the pattern at fifteen. It's taken twenty years to walk it out. But oh, friend, the fruit is sweet. Lift up your eyes and give God credit where He is due. Every single thing in this world is held together by Him. There is no point in taking a humanist view of a divine world; it will only limit your joy and undermine your faith. You can see Him everywhere, because He IS everywhere, but you must lift your eyes – or open them to begin with. 

I am bringing this section back to the newsletter this week to celebrate the end of our “big school” era this year! We homeschool year round because the freedom is worth it (we can take time off whenever we want throughout the year and they remember their work so much better). However, we shift to lighter work for the summer months after Classical Conversations ends. Here's what we completed!

We celebrated our accomplishment with a Starbucks run today, but we'll host my parents for a “showcase” of what they learned in early June.