What do you feel when you hear the word peace? If you can picture yourself at a beach watching the waves form, you can hear the sound the ocean makes as the force of the tide rolls into the shore. I love watching the waves crash and then eclipse into salty foam, just as the water calms as it reaches your toes. That’s what I feel when I hear the word peace. It’s almost as if the strongest forces around me slowly start to still like ocean water.

Peace has been somewhat of an anthem for me over the course of the last year. After naming our son Griffin Jeffrey, Jeffrey after my dad, we came to love what the name meant. Jeffrey, in some translations, means “God’s peace.” Little did I know that peace would be the last word I would ever use to describe my son’s personality as he grew from a newborn to a one year old. So often over the last several months, I’ve felt so defeated in my desire for peace.

I bet I admit to not knowing how to parent multiple times a day. Sometimes, I vent that in frustration. Sometimes, I mentally check out when I feel exasperated. But I also find knowing that I don’t know how to fearlessly love my son the way that I want to actually helpful to admit. Sometimes I cry that out to Jesus in a desperate prayer, asking for his peace to transcend everything happening in my little world. Yesterday was one of the days.

My goal for Saturday was to spend my morning deep cleaning the apartment I had neglected all winter. So with rubber gloves on up to my elbows and two different kinds of Dran-O (thanks to my indecisiveness) I had spent way too much time mulling over the night before in an empty Target aisle, I got to work on our sinks. But Griffin.

But Griffin, who was supposed to go down for his morning nap while Hunter was at the gym, refused to sleep. Through his sound machine, my shocked gags at what was coming up from our drains, and my podcast, I could still hear his cries and it nagged me. In frustration, I tried throwing off my extra small rubber gloves that were essentially Spandex on my fingers. After seemingly endless minutes, I had worked up in my mind that I was going to let Griffin have it and hope that I could scare him into a deep sleep. But right as I had my hand on the door handle, peace came.

Instead of acting out of irritation that my whole morning had been a series of stopping and starting the tasks I so badly wanted to check off the three page to-do list, I felt God’s peace. I looked at my son with compassion that surprised me and held him as he rubbed his eyes and put his head on my shoulder. If the rest of my day had turned around because of one simple mindset shift that I honestly cannot take any credit for, then I would have nothing to write about. The moment was over in a matter of minutes, and Griffin was on to fussing about the next thing. For the rest of the day, he continued in his dissatisfaction, moving from one toy to the next..always seeming to want to play with phone cords or pulling clothes out of drawers I had just organized.

On days like this, Hunter and I are practically giddy for bed time. I gave Griffin his bath, for which lasted all of six minutes before he was over it. He tried ripping the pages out of the new Beginner’s Bible we had gotten him for Easter, so I tossed it back on the nightstand not even putting up a fight. He wiggled and squirmed in my arms as I silently started crying from my weariness. I so desperately wanted my one year old to let me hold him while he’s this small. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about how fleeting these moments are, and for me it has so often felt like I won’t have many sweet moments to remember. The kicking and crying and screaming that comes from my son so consistently…and his middle name means God’s peace?

Since birth, I have sung a song that’s been special to my family. Sometimes he cries through it, knowing he’s about to get put in his crib. Or he laughs as he tries to stick his finger up my nose (and often goes too far), or painfully grabs different parts of my face. But last night as I rocked him, he was still and looked at me intently as I sang.

May the Lord, Mighty God
Bless and keep you forever
Grant you peace, perfect peace;
Courage in every endeavor…

To the tune of Edelweiss from the Sound of Music

Even after the last line, he was still tranquil. So I sat on the guest bed next to his crib, in the dimmed room and began to read from the book of John from my phone.

We started in John 14. And there, in the text, as if Jesus knew the exact words we needed that night, it read:

But the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled…

John 14:27, New International Version, YouVersion Bible App

As I read these words, Griffin’s eyes began to get heavy. Somewhere between Chapter 14 and 15, he drifted asleep, as I kept reading aloud through the end of John. And what I found weaved throughout the pages was that Jesus deeply and genuinely wanted peace for the people he loved (John 14:27, 16:33, 20:19, 21, 26). Perfect peace. Peace that doesn’t minimize our hardship, but can overpower it.

I love that words like this turn to verbs when Jesus gets ahold of them. We can embody peace and we can exude joy because Jesus lived a perfect life. It was still full of pain and full of suffering and yet, he was peace. It always amazes me that when I decide to love the way that Jesus loves, peace arises. Perfect peace, peace that I cannot take any credit for and or even fully understand how it happens.

Can I share something with you? Even after such a sweet moment with my son that I thought would certainly last, I still struggle with patience and desiring peace more than I want to control the situations I find myself in. Griffin is so incredibly easy to love when he is happy and for those moments, I am so grateful. In my imperfection, I don’t want my parenting to require extra effort from me.

Unconditional love is really hard. Building character in my life is remarkably challenging because it means I have to fight the ugliness in my own heart and mind. I don’t have this figured out, but what I do know is this: Jesus wants peace for our lives. He makes that so evidently clear. I find it so amazing that he spent his life on earth ensuring we could have that.

Do you believe that about him? Do you believe that a person who lived 2,000 years ago thought about you by name and desired a steadfast heart for you? I love that Thomas, his follower, had so many realistic questions for Jesus and pushed past the fear of not knowing it all in order to ask him. I have no doubt that it would have been so much easier for Thomas to internalize his hesitations about Jesus. He could’ve nodded in agreement with the other followers and put on a facade, but I love this part:

Do you want to know the first thing Jesus said to Thomas? That he wanted peace to be with him. Jesus didn’t want Thomas to feel alone with his uncertainty, he wanted Thomas to have a steadfast mind–peace!

I believe that Thomas would come to know in his heart that Jesus had a love for him that was unconditional, that his presence brought a peace that transcended all human comprehension, that Jesus too had a deep desire for truth in a confusing world, and that his questions could not possibly deter Jesus from looking at Thomas any differently. And that freed Thomas to ask Jesus whatever he wanted to ask him, just like it frees you and it frees me to have a relationship with him like that.

Maybe you’re like me or you’re like Thomas. Maybe you have no idea how to go about a certain relationship in your life or maybe you’re unsettled by decisions you have to make or maybe you are just really, really tired with your every day, ordinary life. I hope you feel safe admitting those things. Isn’t there something freeing about expressing that? And I am praying that even if you may not know what you wish you could know right now, you’ll sense perfect peace. I hope you continue to ask your questions with me as we learn how to live out of a steadfast, peaceful heart.

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

John 16:33, NIV

Like the ocean tide stretching to the sandy shore,
may you experience His peace reaching for you.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie

motivation | ˌmōdəˈvāSH(ə)n | 

noun: the reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way: escape can be a strong motivation for travel. 

• the general desire or willingness of someone to do something: keep staff up to date and maintain interest and motivation.

New Oxford American Dictionary (American English)

Have you ever had someone ask you a question about yourself that you just didn’t seem to have an answer for? For the last year, I have developed a fascination for studying my own motives and the motivations of others. I’m always interested to learn what makes someone else tick, hoping to find explanations for why people are the way that they are. And maybe in a subconscious way, I look for clues about myself in the behaviors of other people. Sometimes in observing someone else, I can confirm or deny my own rationale for doing, thinking, and especially feeling things.

But I’ve only gotten so far with finding out who I really am below the surface with this approach. Shockingly, it has become way more challenging to come up with answers when I ask this question:

What is my why?

To take it one step further, the question I’ve been focusing on is, “What is my primary motivation in my work?” Before becoming a mom last April, I held a leadership position at a franchised fast-food restaurant. Due to the nature of the growing business, I wore many hats between the operations, restaurant marketing, human resources and administration, while serving as an assistant to the franchise owner. Out of all of my responsibilities, this role was what I was most proud of and where I kept most of my esteem.

If you’ve ever worked in food service, you’ll know that the business operates on food quality and guest satisfaction. Those two components seem straightforward until you add maintaining job fulfillment for the 100 employees who drive the business — who all come with diverse and sometimes undeclared motivations.

After staying home with Griffin, I transferred what job responsibilities I could into my new circumstances, but the basic human interaction I relied on so heavily began to shift. It’s not a surprising discovery, but somehow it shocked me at the time. Sales continued to aggressively climb into the summer and the effect of that particular cause was that the store got busier and turnover ran its course. As the hiring door kept revolving, my proximity to my co-workers dissipated. My boss, who I had worked closely with for two years was forced to focus on developing new leaders, anticipating business changes, and the growth of his second location.

Gradually, no one had unlimited time to spend on the phone with me to talk about the weather or laugh at my quotes from The Office. For someone who never likes conversations to end, I suddenly had to work on getting straight to what I needed to either ask or communicate in order to get the job done. My job became a virtual reality and I really failed at not taking things personally when my emails didn’t get returned. Abruptly, I no longer had a grip on what motivated my team and I absolutely had no idea what motivated me. Can I just tell you what naturally began to subtract from the work equation here?

Common ground.

And also a little bit of my rational mind.

The thing that saved me in the transition of becoming a mom and working from home was walking. I spent miles of pavement wrestling over who I mattered to and what responsibilities I could take on so that I could feel appreciated. I practically burned holes in my shoes as I brainstormed ways I could contribute to the business so that I wouldn’t be forgotten from home. What that produced was an insane amount of expectations that depended on everyone but myself.

• The expectation I set on my newborn baby to behave and stay quiet so that I could make it through my list of phone calls was the opposite of nurturing.

• The expectation that I placed on my husband to listen to what did or didn’t happen that really upset me about my work day drained both of us.

• The expectation I subconsciously placed on my boss to relay every decision in immense detail to me so that we could consult together before anything went into implementation was not just unrealistic, but truly theatrical.

The tragic reality of my expectations was that I believed with the utmost conviction that the world owed me all of the attention, the appreciation, and the affirmation for my efforts to be Superwoman. I ignored all of the small print underlined in my thoughts that I was motivated way more by what I gained and not what I could give.

Do you know what unraveled in the wake of my indisputable mindset?

• My son cried hours out of the day and I couldn’t even accomplish the simple tasks I used to do with my eyes shut.
  • Result: I felt like a failure at motherhood.

• My husband took a beating from my constant negativity and disappointment in unrealistic expectations of him.
  • Result: My problems understandably so fell on deaf ears and the idea that I could do everything on my own began to take root.

• My co-workers received promotions.
  • Result: I couldn’t be happy for them.

The business was succeeding, but I could only focus on what was failing for me. What wasn’t happening for me was receiving attention, appreciation, and affirmation in the exact way I had envisioned it being bestowed on me. My biggest drive was to prove how distinctive my work could be, how special my contributions to the world were, how no one else understood all that I did and all that I was, and just how unmatched and irreplaceable I was in the company.

I was so motivated by how other people could make me feel that I could be crushed by an email response, by my feedback not swaying a decision, or by an unanswered phone call in an instant. My productivity in both my work and my home life suffered, culminating into my newly developed skill of producing excuses in bulk for my behavior as if they came from a factory.

I couldn’t escape the question, “What’s my why?” anymore. My why stunk and I knew that I couldn’t go on living with my toxic motivations and expect to experience any happiness. It was never going to be enough. So I started praying that Jesus would help me to know his grace and his truth in his fullness. I began praying for a steadfast heart that produced sustainable joy. I am no overnight success story, not by a long shot. I will forever be a W.I.P. (that’s a work-in-progress).

Somewhere between a leadership podcast and my coffee kicking in one morning, the reminder hit me like a load of bricks that the most significant thing I can ever do in this life is what I do for other people. Dots started connecting one after the other after reading through Jesus’s parable of the talents (see Matthew 21, Luke 19). What struck me was that I don’t want to live a life wasting my work because I’m waiting for what I think I deserve first.

I don’t want to waste my job opportunity because I fear I don’t add enough value. I don’t want to get to the end of my life or this season and realize I had withheld my contributions or gifts from my company. And I really don’t want to see my work as anything less than a platform for the kingdom of God. The role I had in my mind for myself is not the role I’m in right now, which I believe with my entire heart is to learn how to be the supporting cast in a story that is much bigger than me.

It’s about time for me to own my role.

• And owning my role means I’m not going to feel sorry for myself.
• Owning my role means that I’m not going to focus on what I do or do not make, especially in comparison to someone else.
• Owning my role means I will not call out other people’s failures. It means I will seize every opportunity to help and assist others by offering my time and abilities.
• Owning my own oasis of excellence as Clay Scroggins writes means I’m not waiting around for someone to recognize what I’m doing, it means I am proactively seeking ways I can empower and encourage others.
• Owning my responsibilities means that the excuses for why something isn’t completed will never get blamed on someone other than myself.
• Taking ownership means that I will find joy in the success of others. That I will learn to celebrate and emotionally invest my very best in company wins, even if I am not part of the benefits they reap.
• Owning the moment, as Carl Lentz would say, means I will say no to my own reactionary responses and I will lean into both the grace and truth that Jesus wants to take over my mindset.

It’d be a pretty amazing story if I told you that I didn’t struggle with my strong feelings and my own significance. I would love to blow your socks off by telling you that after writing this, I’ll never wrestle with wanting to give my very best to my work ever again. Wish I could say I’ll never feel sorry for myself when people disappoint me or that I don’t hope for a bigger leadership position or a larger paycheck. I think I’ll always have to choose between pressing into the now and the not yet.

But I am coming to slowly understand that when I own my role and see it the way God sees it, my motivation changes. My why becomes because I want to produce quality work so that people may know that they are supported, encouraged, and loved for who they are, not what they do. My why becomes wanting to help others feel acknowledged, appreciated, and affirmed because when we all apply ourselves to our work, the whole organization wins.

Can I just say that I am so grateful that Jesus is showing me how to live out of a steadfast heart? I am profoundly aware at how much I need a road map for life. I am praying every day that God will expose my motives and remind me of my why, even as I doubt the importance of my work. The funny thing is that as I’ve been practicing owning my role of being on the support team, the same amount of my emails go unanswered, I am not clued in to every decision that gets made, and more co-workers are receiving raises and promotions. What’s changing is me–and I am finding more of myself and my purpose in what I can give rather than what more I can gain.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie