Whether we name them or not, our values shape everything we do.
It was about 5 or 6 years ago.
Maybe during Covid, maybe just before I can’t remember.
My wife and I were on an evening stroll in our pre-kid era.
A time when we could just walk out the front door without having to coordinate a master strategy for strollers, sweaters, diapers, and a few more pounds of absolutely ESSENTIAL GEAR.
We just walked right out the front door.
Fools.
As we walked down the steep sidewalk along our busy street, we quickly found ourselves trailing behind a pair of mom’s talking about their children.
Their conversation seemed to revolve exclusively around the optimization of every detail of their kid’s extra-curricular activities.
There were violin lessons to attend, multiple sports to play, clubs to lead, and edges to be won out over others.
They were going to do everything in their power to be sure that there little ones ended up exactly where they needed them to be one day.
Best college. Best career.
Yeah, we were judging these mommas pretty hard.
As I said before, we weren’t parents at the time and I have a bit more understanding for this way of thinking now that we do have kids of our own, but we committed then and there to never have a conversation about our kids that sounded like that.
A conversation about controlling outcomes.
I don’t think anyone can control their own outcomes, much less anyone else’s.
But we can choose our own values.
That’s what we decided to talk about on our walk that day.
What are the values we want to live for?
For me, they were and still are:
Presence
Power
Beauty
Beloved-ness
I want to live in the awareness of God’s Presence, in the strength of His Power, in the wonder of His Beauty, and the reception of my own Beloved-ness for all of my days.
Those values haven’t changed, but man oh man the outcomes have.
On that steep sidewalk hill 5 or 6 years ago, I could have never imagined that I would get to be part of a spiritual formation ministry that helps people discover and grow in their creative callings, but God saw that outcome clear as day.
When we gathered a few friends to begin the work of Abiding Practice, we knew our first conversation had to be about our values, not our goals.
Goals are great, they can give direction.
Outcomes are helpful, they can create reflection and growth.
We just believe that goals don’t matter if you have to sacrifice your values to get there and outcomes mean nothing if you have to sacrifice obedience to achieve them.
At Abiding Practice, we wanted to discern the values God had called us to embody first, trusting that if we lived out of those values, we’d better understand what to do next.
In those early discernment meetings we believe God showed us values to live for, not outcomes to control for.
He showed us the way we were meant to act, not the place those actions would take us.
We don’t know what the outcomes of tomorrow will bring.
But we know the values we seek to embody as we find out.
Beauty
Peace
Wisdom
Simplicity
