I Didn’t Mean To

“I didn’t mean to.” Ah, the phrase that forgives a thousand sins. Isn’t that what we want when we use the phrase? How many times has it fallen from your mouth in a casual situation? Maybe not as much as an adult but think back to your youthful days. The days of running around carefree with the wind in your hair. Okay, that sounds like an episode of The Waltons. Maybe you are running around the backyard and just trying to avoid stepping in dog feces with bare feet. That sounds much more like my “carefree” days of childhood. No matter how you spent those days, I’m almost certain at some point you looked your parents in the eyes and uttered the famous phrase, “I didn’t mean to.” Whether that was in reference to a family heirloom you carelessly careened into, a sibling you smacked with a tree branch, or an animal you accidentally let outside despite being told repeatedly not to. It doesn’t matter what brought on the need for the phrase just that it was used. 

“I didn’t mean to” was a go-to excuse for me. That’s right, I said excuse. It would fly from my mouth for anything I wanted forgiveness for, especially when I knew I was in the wrong. I don’t remember when my mother began to fight back my sad excuse with her motherly wisdom but she did. She would look me in the eye and say, “I know, but you didn’t mean not to either.” Huh? What? Say that again? Don’t just twist my words into a new meaning woman and act like you just dropped a truth bomb. My young brain was always stumped by this until one day it finally clicked. Yes, it was true that I had not set out to forget to unload the dishwasher but I had done nothing to ensure that I would remember either. 

Intentionality is the heart of “I didn’t mean to.” Well, the lack of it I should say. My mom’s words have clung to my mind and embedded themselves in my heart. I spent so many years of my life without intentionality. And, let’s be honest, it’s easier. Being intentional is difficult, tiring, and the last thing we want to do most days. Sadly, our intentionality often ends at the door and those closest to us see very little intentional love. (In our defense, I do think we are intentional but with family it often feels like “what you do” instead of intentional love.) We blow through our days reacting to every comment, look, and action without ever truly stopping to consider how we can be intentional. Life goes at lightspeed and our hearts just can’t keep up. 

So what if intentionality gets left behind? What does that really matter when there are grace and forgiveness? To skip over intentionality in our days, I believe, is to miss the heart of our Creator. Before He commanded the sun to shine and the fish to swim, He had intentionally planned out redemption and our salvation. He knew my name before my parents named me and whispered into my heart all that He has planned for me. He knew how He would recuse the nation of Israel and how many times Peter would deny Him. We serve an intentional God. And yes, He is omniscient and we are not; but, even without being all-knowing, we can know enough to be intentional. 

I think of our lineage of “I didn’t mean to” and find myself at the beginning. Wasn’t that what Adam and Eve basically confessed when God asked what they had done? They didn’t confess, they passed blame. If there had been intentionality in their hearts, how might they have gone about NOT eating from the tree? What about Peter and his denial of Christ? He was told that he would indeed deny his dearest friend and yet we don’t see Peter engage any safeguards to protect himself from his own flesh. We find our eternal souls wrapped in fallen flesh that longs only for forgiveness. Isn’t it easier to get forgiveness than permission? Isn’t saying “I didn’t mean to” easier than setting your mind on how to avoid doing something?

Jesus tells us in Mark 12, “The Lord our God is the one and only Lord. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. The second is equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.” It would make sense for a God of complete intentionality to expect intentionality out of His creation. If we are to love Him with all that we are, wouldn’t that look like an intentional love? Loving my neighbor as myself doesn’t look forgetful or selfish. It looks like effort––the one thing none of us feel we have any to spare. 

So, how do you give one more brain cell to thought when you feel as if they are squirrels running loose in a maze? I have found that intentionality requires practice, space, and lots of prayer. Practice being intentional in easy and simple ways to start with, don’t try to win an Olympic award for intentionality out of the gate. Send a text, make a call, write a little note––find ways to love on those around you that don’t tax you in a grand way. Maybe it is slipping a note in your husband’s lunch to tell him you can’t wait to see him after work. It could be a quick text to a friend to simply say that you love them and can’t wait to see them. Don’t feel like it has to be perfect or extreme. Keep it simple and sincere. 

You need space to be intentional and you need to be intentional to make space. Space is a luxury very few of us have. It is often taken up with wonderful activities but so many times, if we are honest, the majority of space is consumed with busyness. This quarantine has awakened us to many areas of our lives where we stay busy just to be busy. What’s even more astounding is how we have managed to find busyness in a quarantine. (We really are an ingenious people group.) Being intentional takes space and a willingness to be inconvenienced. Don’t think you can just dive into the deep end of the intentionality pool. It’s better to wade in inch by inch. I promise that as you surrender more of your time and space to the Lord, as you seek to find space to be intentional, He will provide it. It has been so sweet to see the Lord miraculously give me time to lean into intentionality as I have slowly eased towards deeper waters. 

Whether you start with prayer or arrive at prayer, somehow you will end up there in this intentionality journey. My days have slowly been consumed with prayers to my Abba about how to intentionally love someone. Maybe I thought about taking someone a quick Starbucks pick-me-up, I will stop and pray before I do so. I want His guidance on how to love His beloveds. I ask Him how He wants me to pray for those closest to me so that even in my prayers for them there is intentionality. Many times, before I send a text I will pray to make sure this is a text full of life. (There are a multitude of texts that have been deleted because they were definitely not intentional.) 

Not every waking moment, single syllable that comes out of my mouth, or action I take is intentional; but, I hope that one day it will be. I want what Jesus had. I want the love that drew others to Him despite His cutting honesty. I believe others saw and felt Jesus’s intentionality and were pulled to him. He was magnetic. We can be too. We can start with simple ways of showing intentional love and watch Christ weave it into the fabric of who we are. So, before we jump headlong into the “normal” we have all been panting for, let’s make sure we do so with intentional hearts.