What's Working at 56

Guiding Principles for Life

Once upon a time, I dropped off my three kids at school after a long, lazy, and messy summer, and I raced home to mop my floors. 

That’s right. 

While my mom friends toasted their first kid-free day together with mimosas and quiche, I blissfully seized the opportunity to finally clean the summer grime off my hardwood.

That was then. 

This is now.

Last week I celebrated my 56th birthday. Five days later, I dropped my baby off for the first day of her last year of high school, where they kick off senior year with a three-day retreat two hours away.

So, rather than racing home to clean my floors and “get back into a routine,” I booked myself a beachfront hotel room for my own three-day retreat. 

Something about turning 56 AND beginning the countdown to the end of the era of parenting high schoolers while ALSO gazing at the ocean has me all contemplative. 

Where have I been? 

Where am I now? 

Where am I going next?  

What’s working for me (i.e. this beach retreat) and what needs tweaking or tossing (i.e. racing home to mop floors)? 

What choices and decisions are bearing fruit?

What filters and guiding principles have served me well? 

I’m at the age where I’m bearing the fruit of past decisions–both bitter and sweet. As a young woman, a new wife, and an inexperienced mother, I wasn’t sure how my choices would eventually play out. Let’s be honest: life is a lot of “let’s try this and hope for the best.” 

I hoped some of my less-than-stellar decisions would play out favorably, despite warnings to the contrary. (See: Decades of laying out in the sun with Hawaiian Tropic Oil SPF 6.)  

But other choices–or rather thousands of small choices over the course of time–have yielded a beautifully abundant harvest. For example, I savor deep, loving relationships with my husband and young adult children. I enjoy peace and contentment, despite chaos all around me. And I’m ever so grateful for my physical and mental health.

Listen, I realize not all this fruit grew solely because of MY decisions and MY habits. Health, for example, can turn on a dime. My husband and kids have free will and can choose to abandon me no matter how well I choose.

I control much less than I’d like to admit. 

But 56 years on this earth gives me a perspective I didn’t have when I was in my 20s, 30s, or 40s. I can connect the dots between the choices I’ve made and the consequences I now experience, both good and bad. And I’m 100% sure that my life is bearing good fruit largely because of a few guiding principles.

Guiding Principle #1: What I pay attention to is what I am becoming.

What I think about, read, watch, listen to, meditate on…it all shapes me. I’ve learned, for example, that paying hours of attention per day to social media and political/world news shapes me into an anxious, fearful, and discontent woman. Similarly, spending countless years rehearsing past hurts and losses shapes me into an angry and bitter woman.

If I want to be a peaceful, wise, and content woman–and I do–then I must focus on things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy (Phil 4:8). And since that’s not my default setting (if it’s yours, then you’re my hero!), I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years literally changing the way I think. Psychology calls this Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. But scripture calls it “taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Christ.” (2 Cor 10:5) 

Guiding Principle #2: What I do most of the time matters more than what I do occasionally.

Healthy habits and routines that I’ve done most days over many years across all areas of life are producing health. As a younger woman, I wasn’t sure if some of this effort to be healthy would pay off. But I’m here to report: IT PAYS OFF! 

Spending time with the Lord most days produces spiritual health.

Eating healthy whole foods and exercising most days produces physical health.

Connecting with my husband and children most days produces relational health.

Setting healthy boundaries most days produces mental health. 

This is both good news and bad news. The good news: there is room for mistakes and imperfections. You don’t have to do healthy things 100% of the time to be healthy. (Yay!)

The bad news: favorable outcomes require patience. If you are a younger woman and have yet to witness the benefits of your healthy lifestyle, you’ll just have to trust me for now. :)

Guiding Principle #3: Choose Life.

In 2019, this was the phrase God gave me based on this passage from Deuteronomy 30:19-20

I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, love the Lord your God, obey him, and remain faithful to him. For he is your life, and he will prolong your days as you live in the land the Lord swore to give to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In essence, God presented me with a simple choice: life or death. He urged me to prioritize life in all my decisions. For instance, if faced with the option to speak kind and uplifting words (life) or utter angry and sarcastic remarks (death), I should choose life. When given the opportunity to connect with a friend in person (life) or isolate myself behind a screen (death), I should embrace life.

Guided by this principle, I made a life-altering decision in 2019: I took a one-year break from social media. This single, life-giving choice set me on a transformative path that forever changed the course of my life. I ultimately decided to leave social media entirely. Remarkably, most of my current closest friends entered my life as a direct result of this decision. Moreover, a whole new chapter of my work, known as Writing Off Social, emerged from this transformative decision. And ironically, Writing Off Social has been the most personally fulfilling and life-giving (to me) work I’ve done to date. 

Guiding Principle #4: Will This Help Me Run?

In 2020, when the world went on lockdown, slowed to a snail’s pace, and started making bread, I did the opposite. I shifted into high gear, wrote a book*, and then moved my family across the country. By the time we unpacked the last moving box and I launched the new book, I was beyond exhausted. When the rest of the world was ready to ramp back up, I desperately needed to slow-the-freak-down.

So, I decided that 2021 would be the year I “reset my pace.” But just as I started envisioning all the ways I would finally embrace slow living, I felt God say to me, “It’s not your pace that’s exhausting you. It’s the weights you carry.” 

Whoa. 

Have you ever tried to run or walk with weights? It’s hard. And exhausting. My friends who are runners tell me they run with as little weight as possible, often leaving behind their phones, buying lighter shoes, and shedding jackets and water bottles and stashing them behind bushes so that they can run unencumbered. 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.  We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.  Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up. (Heb 12: 1-3)

Throughout that year, God showed me all the extra weight I was carrying. Responsibilities I needed to lay aside. Routines I needed to rethink. Expectations I needed to let go of. 

Since that time, whenever I’m faced with whether I should pick up something new, I ask myself, “Will this help me run?” 

Guiding Principle #5: Abide in Christ.

I’ve talked about this so much already, but a list of guiding principles would be incomplete without this, the Mac Daddy of all Guiding Principles.

Until 2017, my go-to was to focus on the fruit I was producing. I wouldn’t have known to call it “fruit.” But without a doubt, I was mostly focused on the output of my life–my grades, my performance, my achievements. If I wanted to get better at something, I took it on as a personal project. I learned everything I could about that particular thing, and then I’d set out to be better at it. If I wanted to be more gentle with my kids, for example, I’d buy a parenting book, learn about being gentle, and try to implement my newly learned parental strategies. 

That’s not a terrible approach. It’s just not sustainable. It was a LOT of effort being pre-2017 Sandy. I was on a perpetual cycle of self-improvement—always trying to figure out what was wrong with me so that I could fix it and be the best version of myself.

That fruit-focused approach mostly worked…right up until it stopped working. 

(Human effort will only take you so far.) 

I know I’m prone to hyperbole, but I promise you, without exaggerating, the most monumental shift of my entire life thus far, happened when the Lord led me to John 15 and camped me there for a solid year. 

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

For the first time, instead of focusing on the fruit of my life, Jesus began teaching me how to focus on the connection between me (the branch) and Him (the Vine). At first, it felt like 100 times a day He was turning my position—my posture—from fruit-focus to Vine-focus. 

Yes, I know you want to respond in love to that difficult person, but you will get there by abiding in Me.

Yes, I know you are striving for peace in that tumultuous family situation, but you will achieve that by abiding in Me.

Yes, I know you want joy despite your world crumbling to pieces, but you will attain that by abiding in Me. 

Yes, I know you want a thriving marriage, but you will gain that by abiding in Me.

My sweet friend Pam bought me this Abide T-shirt for my 56th birthday.

I’m still learning, for sure. Jesus still needs to remind me to shift my focus from fruit to Him on the daily. But at age 56, I’m seeing the truth of John 15, and of all these Guiding Principles play out in real life.

Love,

Sandy

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