What's Here Now?

How to Stop Rehashing the Past and Rehearsing the Future--and Start Receiving the Present

Jeanne Stevens

• Publisher: Revell
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780800740856
• eBook ISBN: 9781493436408
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Life is filled with uncertainty, and people have never needed peace more. When it comes down to it, what keeps us from experiencing peace in our lives is either living in the past or living for the future. When we obsess over what's already happened or put all of our efforts into creating a picture-perfect tomorrow, we miss what God has for us here and now. The result is regret over what we can't change, and anxiety over what we feel we must change. That's not what God wants for us.

With honest transparency, hope-filled compassion, and plenty of vulnerable humor, pastor Jeanne Stevens reveals the shockingly simple path to peace: presence. She helps you slow down, center yourself, and ask the all-important question, What's here now? Jeanne gives readers practical tools to move from obsessing about the past or worrying about the future to experiencing peace and purpose in the present moment.

By incorporating this simple question into your everyday life, you will experience freedom from unhealthy patterns of relating to God and others through the avenues of shame, guilt, worry, and anxiety.

Part 1: Rehashing the Past

1
Blame

I Take Thee to Be My Life Coach

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my very first confession.” These were the words I was coached to say when I walked into the dark, intimidating mahogany box to offer my inaugural confession. I was seven years old, and while I was far from angelic, my list of sins was undoubtedly not going to sound any alarms. I was raised Catholic because my parents were raised Catholic and my grandparents were raised Catholic. If I ever get around to doing my Ancestry.com personal history lesson, I’m sure I’ll find a spun-out line of Catholics in my story.

While my seven-year-old self was far too naïve to give a theological lecture on the practice of confession, I knew why I was committed to going through with the act. Going to confession was the gateway to communion, and I was tired of sitting through Sunday mass week after week watching my parents get the complimentary bread and juice while I stayed in my seat. I was savvy enough to know that a little hit of carbs and sugar could quickly turn a boring situation around.

My seven-year-old fellow sinners and I sat in the dimly lit church as the thick aroma of incense infused the air, each of us anxiously waiting for our name to be called. I silently rehearsed my list of sins. First, it would be hard not to put the many different disputes between me and my brothers on the list. Second, I’d have to include that time I lied to my mom about how far I went on my bike ride down the prairie path with my neighborhood friends.

I had these two offenses on my trespasses list, even though I was still unsure what a spiritual trespass was. And then I heard them call, “Jeanne Pieczynski.” That’s my maiden name. I spent twenty-three years praying to marry a Jones or Smith. When I met my husband, Jarrett, and found out his last name was Stevens, I knew the relationship could advance to the next phase; the fact that I was falling madly in love also helped.

“Jeanne Pieczynski.” They called my name a second time. I nervously tucked my light brown hair behind my ears and clutched my children’s Bible like a comforting security blanket. Standing up, I flattened out my skirt and straightened my posture as I walked to the back of the church. My palms were sweaty as I recited my opening line under my breath.

I opened the creaky door, looked inside, and saw a kneeler and a chair. I quickly chose the kneeler, and as I situated myself, the thick, forest green, velvet curtain on the other side of the box opened up. Before I could get my opening line out, the priest said, “Hi, Jeanne. Welcome to your first confession; there is nothing to be nervous about.” I nodded, still very nervous.

“Dear Father, I have sinned; bless me, this is my first confession,” I said. The words fell out in the wrong order, but before I could repair my fumble, the priest said, “What would you like to talk about, Jeanne?” I weighed my options. I knew what I didn’t want to talk about. I was a pretty decent conversationalist, so I knew I could either dance around a few different topics while avoiding the inevitable or just go right to the deep end. I decided to launch straight in, no small talk. No setup. Just one long, run-on sentence.

“I lied to my mom last week about how far I rode my bike on the prairie path my mom said I could only go to the end of the path and not cross the street but there were no cars and we were fine and I had been down that way so many times before and I really wish she would just let me start crossing the path because I am seven now oh and I also fight with my brothers sometimes most of the time they start the fights because I am just trying to play piano in the dining room and they come in and interrupt with their nerf basketball games so really the only reason I am sometimes unkind is that they are always bugging me.”

I verbally vomited my two sins without pausing to breathe, and I was resolved not to take responsibility for either of them. Blame was my getaway car to avoid any penance for my sins. Blame felt better than remorse, and if the priest believed my excuses, I would waltz out of that dark little box with a free pass and counterfeit forgiveness.

While I didn’t really have a conscious knowledge at the time of what I was doing, I paid in full for what blame has been selling from the beginning of time: giving away responsibility for my actions to someone or something else. Isn’t that the way it is with blame? It allows us to put the fault elsewhere by transferring responsibility. At first glance, this sounds like a brilliant equation to absolve us of any wrongs, yet the tension lies in the way we get through blame’s narrow passageway. It’s usually by accusation, punishment, humiliation, or criticism, and the last time I checked, 0.0 percent of people make progress and take relational steps forward using such destructive and emotionally damaging behaviors.

Like a convincing con artist lurking in the shadows of our past, blame’s ambition is to become a necessary function in our lives as we subtly learn to rely on its dependable behavior that rescues us from taking healthy responsibility and living with honest accountability. We blame:

• When life deals us a card we wouldn’t have chosen.
• When a relationship moves in a direction we would not have steered toward.
• When someone tries to back us into a corner, and we feel pressure to carry more weight than we’re willing to bear.

The mind is quick to point a finger elsewhere, desperate to push away the responsibility we are unwilling to hold. Most of the time this tendency is buried beneath years of built-up blaming behavior, and we don’t even realize how much we rely on old, dependable blame. Blame becomes an unconscious way we maneuver through the world—like an optical viewfinder of how to look at our lives rather than take responsibility for them.

Primary Patterns

Blame is a topic as wide as the ocean, but I want to focus our conversation on how blame impacts our ability to be in the present moment with God, ourselves, and others. I want to help us better understand how blame diligently works to keep us locked in the past and outside of how God is at work in our present lives. So much of my understanding about blame comes from research I’ve done periodically, but there has been no better research than my own life, as I can attest to being a card-carrying blame addict since I entered that confessional at age seven.

When we are unwilling to be accountable for our actions, blame is always there to direct, defend, and even deceive us out of taking responsibility for ourselves. The trickery of blame is that it never begins with blatant or blaring announcements. Blame rarely comes into the room making bold declarations that it’s about to bulldoze anyone and everything in its path. It just starts dozing, and all those near its route usually end up feeling the bulldozer’s presence. The fascinating thing about blame is that it almost always gets stronger and more defined the more it’s used. Each time we return to it, it’s like the brain knew to leave behind breadcrumbs of remembrance pointing us back to the last time blame allowed us to escape the pressure we assumed responsibility would put on us.

In my experience, blame has three primary patterns when it shows up in our lives: directing, defending, and deceiving. These are blame’s most reliable blocks to keep us disconnected from God, ourselves, and one another.

I know we are still getting to know one another, and this is only chapter 1, but you need to know something about me right at the top: I absolutely love alliteration. It helps me remember things that are important while bringing out the preacher in me who has spent twenty-five years crafting memorable phrases and sticky statements in sermons that get my friends Zoie and Tamara always shouting back with an “Amen.” Consider yourself warned.

Now, back to the three Ds.

Directing

Blame’s first move usually begins with directing attention, responsibility, and accountability away from itself. Blame will always search out ways to try to change another person’s behavior by controlling, coaching, or accusing in order to shift responsibility elsewhere. If blame can turn up the lights on something or someone else’s actions, it can forgo any responsibility it is unwilling to absorb. Like a movie director yelling “Action!”, directing blame starts to call, create, and control the narrative so the responsibility never points to the actual person needing to absorb it.

I love my kids, Elijah and Gigi. They are incredible. They are fun, thoughtful, and creative. They are wildly unique and truly two of my favorite people to spend time with. They still go to one another’s rooms each night before they head to bed to say I love you. It makes my heart warm and gooey every time I hear them in the upstairs hallway. I could literally write chapters upon chapters about how I feel about them. They own my heart in ways I never thought possible. But somewhere along the way they both became expert blamers. Both could easily win Academy Awards when it comes to directing blame onto someone else.

“Did you feed the dogs?” I ask. “No, it’s not my turn.”

“Did you set the table?” I ask. “I did it last night. Why don’t you ask her about the last time she set the table?”

“Did you fold the laundry that I washed and dried for you?” I ask. “Do you know how much homework I have? I don’t have time to fold my laundry.”

It’s like they somehow signed up for a secret online class I never knew about, which taught them martial arts maneuvers on how to direct away responsibility. But this wild skill of pushing the attention onto someone or something else is not just something kids are good at doing. Anyone who has deflected responsibility knows what it feels like. We convince ourselves that owning up would be too hard, so we direct attention elsewhere.

You’re late for a meeting. “Wow, traffic was such a beast this morning.”

You forgot to respond to an email you said you would respond to. “Do you have any idea how much is on my plate?”

You said something you wish you hadn’t. “Well, it is mostly true, and I needed to get it off my chest.”

Directing responsibility elsewhere is a skill most of us acquired somewhere along the way, and we’ve kept it in our relational back pocket to pull out whenever taking responsibility for something feels a little too raw or vulnerable. And directing is not the only party trick blame likes to use.

Defending

Anyone skilled in the ability to blame has probably been their own defense lawyer. Like a litigator who knows their way around the judge, jury, and courtroom, they are adept at citing all the important facts to shift the blame. Pushing the attention of the problem onto someone else. Lawyering up in their tone, bravado, and nonverbal communication. Seeking to shut down and completely turn around an argument. The defender is skilled in the ways of getting out of responsibility.

Jarrett and I may have missed our calling in life because both of us have mastered this skill. No wonder our kids are already expert blamers. Early in our marriage our fights were somehow won or lost based on who was better at their defense. Whoever showed up ready to play and to take the other down was the one who remained standing in victory—until we realized that winning a fight on defense, whether the facts were true or not, never satisfied. We were fighting about content that was ultimately meaningless and not fighting for the greater context of having a thriving marriage.

As if directing and defending weren’t enough, the skilled blamer usually has one last trick if all else fails, and sadly it’s the skill of deceit.

Deceiving

I remember when I first heard Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” I even remember wanting to deceive myself into not believing that passage was true. How could the heart be deceitful? Then I started doing some good and hard soul work on my own heart and realized that my heart wants what my heart wants. And usually when the heart wants something, it will go to great lengths to have it.

When we don’t want to feel the weight of responsibility, the heart will do whatever it can to move away from any possible pain it might experience, and deceit is one of the heart’s most reliable moves. Spinning tales. Making up half-truths. Not owning up to something. These are usually the early seedlings associated with d...

Table of contents

• 1Endorsements
• 5Half Title Page
• 7Title Page
• 8Copyright Page
• 9Dedication
• 11Contents
• 13Foreword
• 17Introduction
• 25Part 1: Rehashing the Past
• 99Part 2: Rehearsing the Future
• 169Part 3: Receiving the Present
• 245Acknowledgments
• 247Notes
• 251About the Author
• 253Back Ads
• 256Cover Flaps
• 257Back Cover