Accumulate

Snow days are nostalgic for me. We often ended up with a week or two worth of snow days over the winter season where I grew up. For me, no school was just one of the perks. The snow is the best part. Even as an adult I long for a snow day…or whatever I can get living in the south. The early morning hours of a snowstorm are sacred. Everything coated in a fresh cold slate, muffled living sounds of the neighborhood, everything holds still as flakes fall quietly on what's already settled.

Accumulation is key.

Without accumulation, there are only flurries melting as they hit ground. However, with consistency, grouping together, maintaining the right temperature, things start piling up. On the flip side, accumulating the wrong precipitation does not nearly have the same effect. Slush and sleet only weigh down the chance at that white crisp snowfall.

I have found myself accumulating the wrong precipitation in my own life. Observing the sky, wondering where all these circumstances and patterns came from. Hadn’t I performed the right deeds and grand gestures to receive my expected outcomes? Hadn’t I developed proper fulfillment formulas to produce results? Rather, as I’ve come to slowly understand: it’s the unnoticed unctions, discrete daily habits, personal preferences and subtle skews that determine what accumulates in our lives. Additionally, if all of these are of my own design, they’ll ultimately leave me wanting.

To use an example from my life: Bitterness and resentment always seemed to accumulate unknowingly until it was thick as ice. It wasn’t as if I sought their company in my life. In fact, I did what I could to keep them at bay, stuffing them down farther. However, a consistent persona of people pleasing was accumulating their presence in my life. It was so ingrained in me, I consistently chose the facade under an illusion that I was serving others. Doing what I was told, telling others exactly what I could tell they wanted to hear. At the slightest sense of conflict, I could pull out every card needed. Protecting others from the heavier truths, as if it was a sacred burden that I alone was capable of carrying. And yet I wondered, why bitterness cropped up like weeds in my life. Endlessly pulling up each sprout only for two more to take root elsewhere.

A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Ga 6:7–8

After repeating the cycle for decades, I finally surrendered what wasn't working. Thankfully, He led me to a revelation that:

If I genuinely care about others, I must fear God more than I fear them.

And when I held that truth, I knew I had something new I could begin accumulating.

As I began to say what is true rather than what I think others wanted to hear, it changed the patterns of my life. My interactions became more authentic, I received truth in return, I was relieved of silent suffering. The ability to say what is true is powerful. I personally, like the way Dr. Jordan Peterson describes it, “Whatever makes itself manifest as a consequence of the truth, is the best possible reality that could be manifest even if you can’t see it.” Even when the truth isn't received gracefully or productively, I have to recognize the end result is still better than the alternative. I think this shift requires a submission of our authenticity to the Lord. Seeking a renewal of mind and soul that refines my ability to speak truth.

but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ. Eph 4:15

I've seen people be 'brutally honest'. And I suppose, sometimes it works. But saying it in love and kindness, that seems to be a whole other level. That's the level I'm seeking to produce. And I’ll be honest, practicing it feels dangerous. Like wielding a tool beyond my skillset. Holding truth and kindness, not as opposites, but as poles in a magnetic field. It's something to contend with in every interaction.

"Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck" Pr 3:3 NASB.

Choices that are made in every interaction do not simply have a cumulative effect, but a compounding one as well. Choices are a deposit into an account. For example: Exercise, healthy eating, church, time with family & friends, scripture reading, commitment to truth, practicing authenticity, etc. Over the course of time, you see the positive rate of return on those investments. Then, what has been accumulated, now earns compound interest.

In a similar way, the opposite choices are a deposit into a negative account. The more you invest in this account, the more you owe. Dollar cost average investments into people-pleasing, return bitterness. Which offers stock options in passive aggressiveness. Gaining access to leveraged trades of resentment. Ultimately, accruing a debt you have to run from to avoid default. The fabric of life around us warps under the weight of such debt. Relationships and community crumble without the foundation of truth and trust.

Just like a good inheritance goes to the surviving relatives. A negative account can also be passed down our bloodline. What we fail to handle in our lives gets passed down to our children. And if they don’t wrestle with it, then they pass it to their children. What started small in the first generation, has amassed into an unmanageable storm for the third and fourth generations. When I consider this in my life I have to recognize: Sure, maybe my patterns didn’t start with me, maybe they were there long before I was born. Regardless, they’re mine now.

After gnawing on this 'accumulation' idea for a couple years, I recently came across an excerpt from C.S. Lewis ‘Mere Christianity’. He says, “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.”

As we individually incorporate biblical habits, disciplines, and obedience, we capture these seemingly small strategic points. The precipitation that we choose in each encounter, becomes the accumulation of our individual life. And the practice extends beyond us as it reaches into the individual lives of the people around us, and those around them. This weather doesn't just happen to us, it's something we choose for ourselves. And if I choose in a renewed posture, then the snowfall doesn't become something that only I can enjoy, but something for my neighborhood as well.