Caging Routines & Cotton-Wooling
Routines can be good, but they can also become ruts that can dictate their regimes to us and make us feel guilty when we don’t do what we have always done. Routines can stop us from entering God’s better plans for us–in little and in great things. God says He will do new things and that they will spring forth, but rut-routines can keep this from becoming a reality to us.
Our rigidity can cause us to miss the creative and zesty life that God wants us to live. Sometimes our over-seriousness can do damage. We can forget that the One who brought our salvation also created beaches, puppies, anteaters, sloths and laughter. In our zeal to do well and keep all of life tightly organized and run right, we can easily miss the little joys and little blessings we were created to experience and to give.
New Matters; vs Cotton-Wool Packing
New locations. New experiences. New people. New thoughts.
These make a difference.
John Steinbeck never made a profession of Christ to my knowledge, but, he did do something I admire. He wrote that–as he grew older–he noticed that people were packing their lives in “cotton-wool.” Cotton-wool is cotton as it comes off the seeds–a fluffy mass of cotton. Packing yourself in it was his way of saying that people insulate themselves safely away from the adventures of life. They chose comfort and security over living life on the edge. People around Steinbeck were becoming sedentary, unadventurous and old in heart. He refused to join the deadening crowd.
One thing he did when he was well into retirement was to hop in a truck and take off to explore our country with his dog, Charley. Not exactly what I’d want to do, but I love his spunk and his line, “People pack themselves in cotton wool.”
if we’re always packing ourselves in cotton-wool–If we miss the new locations, new experiences, new people, new adventures and new ways of thinking that God has for us, we’ll miss an enormous amount of God’s intentions for our lives. These new things God has for us make a profound difference! It’s the difference of living the abundant life Jesus said he came to give us…and missing it.
Bold Little New Things
Adventures are important. Even little ones.
Renita and I jumped ship on the kids a couple months ago and headed 300 miles up the east side of the Sierra Mountains of California. We visited one of my favorite blink-and-you-miss-it towns along the way, Lone Pine. It sits at the right at base of Mt Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states.
We enjoyed a few very wonderful days there horsing around spending our days having a ball visiting the stores and the cafes, and throroughtly enjoying having fun exploring Alabama Hills, the wild-boulder-covered hills at the base of Whitney. It was here that many scenes of the old John Wayne and Roy Rogers movies were shot. While we were at it, we discussed books we were working on, plans for the upcoming year and a whole lot of beautiful things we’ve been praying for and working on.
It was a little stay we’ll never forget. We even had room views that took your breath away. From our table in our little hotel room, we could see the mammoth, incredibly beautiful Mt Whitney framed perfectly in our hotel window. We couldn’t get over the beauty of it.
We grew to love the little town.
From there we headed up to the town of Bishop and the stunning Mammoth Mountain area. There is lots of beauty between these two spots! But I don’t want to talk about these. Instead I want to relate a couple wimpy adventures I braved at the town of Bishop with the help of Renita, and a couple lessons I gained again.
Bishop Bravery. Feebly Resisting Cotton-Wooling Syndrome
In Bishop, there’s one hotel that I’ve stayed at before which turned out to be the most lucrative stay of my life. That’s another fun story for another day. But, to appreciate this story, you have to know that this is a NICE hotel; a bit more expensive than Renita and I usually get. It’s quite cushy. While there, my cotton-wool instincts roared in.
Niceness has a way or making un-niceness tougher. And so it was on the morning after our one night there. We were cotton-wooled away in our very snazzy, very comfortable room snacking on very good things and enjoying our very nice cotton-wool views from very nice our toasty room. Outside sported a very unpleasant 20ºF. Not for California-me, that’s for sure.
In the midst of the pleasantness, my mini-adventure instincts began to kick in taking stabs at my cotton-wool preferences: “I bet the sunrise will be outrageous over the Sierras…But gads, 20 degrees is no fun. But Renita would love to see it…But 20º! But the beauty!”
I battled the prospects back and forth for a few minutes. Mini-adventuring and love for Renita squeaked in a win for the pansy-rugged. I made the pitch to go on a walk in the back forty of Bishop in the chilly morning. She went for it. Her Minnesota-tough blood took over. Shucks. We bundled up and an unenthusiastic me took off with my too-tough bride.
Surprise, surprise. I am actually REALLY glad we did.
We drove outside of town and parked on a little road. We were the only lunatics out there. A town of 10,000 and we were the only ones in the frigid forgotten lands! But we braved it, getting out of the quite-nicely heated car and went walking along a deserted road . As we did, we began witnessing an unforgettable sunrise striking the 14,000 foot peaks lining the massive western horizon. It was quite stunning!
A couple beyond-friendly horses greeted us out there in the middle of nowhere. They graced us with some fun photo-ops, then tromped back to their lazy grazing in their world-class-view pasture. All was chilly… but absolutely unforgettable.
We stayed a while then started driving back to our room when we found a beautiful neighborhood a mile away. We parked and strolled through an amazingly pretty Better-Homes-and -Gardens place. It contained every kind of conifer known to man and most all the homes had routed part a crystal-clear mountain stream through their yards giving them ponds, little cascades and fun water features.
We had a ball as the sun began to streak through the neighborhood homes. While walking and enjoying the sights and sounds, we read parts of the Word and did a whole lot of talking about the Lord and His goodness to us.
A Second Chilly Dose
I got a whiff of wild from all the beauty and as we headed back to our cotton-wool motel room, I got the really dumb idea of jumping in the outdoor jacuzzi now that it was a balmy 30ºF outside . Then I got an insane idea of jumping in the pool, too. That’s a bit off -the-charts crazy for a skinny guy like me. I don’t like cold. Actually I hate it. I FEEL it…in a big–a huge–way. Way worse than you I’m sure. But I decided to make a pitch for it. Renita was game, of course, her insanity arctic-cold Minnesota blood kicking in again. Cold tough. Me? So-Cal boy. Nope, unless I’m delirious. Fifty degrees means pulling out the snow clothes in my neck of the woods. I was not excited, again, but I agreed to my crazy proposition.
With some grit on my part and a great Christian book in hand, we headed out to the table by the outdoor jacuzzi. We were the only little-bit baby toughies out there. But there we sat being warmed by the morning sun, reading our so-incredible God-book aloud to each other. It was nice; really really nice. Incredibly inspiring!
It came time to jump in the pool. We actually did it. The water was close to as cold as the water at the North Pole. Seriously. We were in and out in 2 seconds flat and into the jacuzzi like greased lightning! But boy did the jacuzzi feel good …and boy did we wake up!
When we headed back to the room, I reflected on the two-hour adventure as my skin was still tingling. I was–and am–astonished at how I pack myself away with cotton-wool and have to fight like a lion to resist it. But when I do, I find Life and the Lord in whole new dimensions.
Do we capture the precious moments of really living that God gives…or do we cotton-wool past them and never stop and never consider the highest things or take time to thrill in God in His creation?
Missing one round may not be such a big deal, but actually it can be. We’ve known many folks and we are part of the happy ones, too, who have seen huge doses of unexpected beauty not only come in adventures that God gives, but also in His intentions that come to pass because we took the time to consider the higher things of the Lord in them. Then multiply this by 10, 20, 30 , 40 or 50 years and you have a categorically different life of one who cotton-wooled their life and one who chose to live in the thick of God’s adventures–big and little.
"Now I will do a new thing...will it not spring forth?" – Isaiah 43:18
