It's hard to believe it's been a whole week since I last posted. It has, of course, been an adjustment time for me, getting the hang of the new rhythm of school and managing my own work. On Wednesday, I listened to the Mars Hill teaching podcast, like a I normally do. And something happened to me that day that poked a very large hole in the multiple layers of plastic wrap that have been keeping me in a very air-tight place for a long time. These are some of the words and phrases I heard that day:
dangerously tired
self sufficient
self grandiosity
"Light a candle alone or with friends. Let each you speak about those things that are left to do. And as the candle burns, allow the cares to melt away. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, said Jesus. The worries of today are sufficient for today. Whatever remains to do, let it be. It will not get done tonight. In Sabbath time, we take our hand off the plow, and allow God and the earth care for what is needed. Let it be."
"I didn't know what to do with the longing that thoughts about sabbath stirred in me."
"If we do not allow for a rhythm of rest, illnesses become our sabbath" Wayne Muller.
how would it change me to trust God with one day a week?
living inside the limits of human limitations
It was a woman who taught that day. I sincerely doubt that I would have taken a man as seriously. There was something about hearing it from another wife and mother, someone who takes her calling seriously, finds her work satisfying and is good at it...I could actually listen to her and not dismiss her.
Sometime in the past 5 years, I stopped believing in Sabbath. The only one of the ten commandments not specifically reiterated in the New Testament, I would say glibly, "Jesus is our Sabbath rest" not even sure what that really meant. And during that time, I have ramped my way up to a person who regularly struggles with insomnia and powerful anxiety, who has learned to ignore the disappointed look on my husband's face when I escape from his embrace with a "I have to go get some stuff done." I am a person who's self-talk says something like this: "Being industrious all the time is the way to be a person that matters." Being a workaholic is an acceptable vice. And being legalistic about working on Sunday is so old-school.
And then I heard these words. And the Holy Spirit whispered, "You've been trying to do it all by yourself. You're not that strong. You are limited."
Do you know what the speaker went on to say? That you honor God when you rest from your work. That you show that you trust him by giving your time. Not your time to clean the church or help in the church office or be there early to make coffee. But your time to rest.
Do you know when people are most likely to shop online? And ask questions about how much it will cost to ship this or that thing to Malaysia? Do you know how often I click in just to check on things...answer a quick question....and become engrossed in business?
I wrote about Sunday long ago. I think I was actually on to something back then. I just didn't know what I was mourning.
I spent all week wrestling with God about it. Arguing with Robb. Listening to the sermon again. A day without buying or selling. A day without toil. A day to be protected. Looking for an out. Finding none. Backing down. Planning to rest. To rest profoundly on Sunday.
Saturday was one of the most productive days I have had since I can remember. I climbed into clean sheets after a warm shower with a glass of wine. All the laundry was done. The house was clean. The kids were clean. Their rooms were clean...ish. We did yardwork. I made a time-line for the move. I organized my mosaic-dish supply. I listed twice as much in my store. It was that amazing Saturday night feeling I hadn't had in a very, very long time. I was ready to rest.
Do you know what kinds of things are traditionally encouraged on the Sabbath? Worship. Eating. Naps. Reading for pleasure. Being with friends. Doing whatever makes you feel most alive. Having sex with your spouse.
As I look over the calendar, I feel a sort of exhilarated terror at the thought of purposefully not working one day of every one of the incredibly hectic weeks to come. Painting at the new house, business trips, a craft show, a move, church meetings, school schedules, regular every-day tasks...it is all looming large on our horizon. I
joked to Robb that I must be crazy to be attempting to incorporate a Sabbath into my life right now.
But I am. Care to join me?
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query sabbath. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query sabbath. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, November 07, 2016
What's Working at 42
Today, I am 42. Which frankly, with a two year old underfoot, feels pretty much exactly like 32 did. But, as I was thinking on this around 5:30 am when my body was trying to convince me it was 6:30 am (thank you, Time Change), I couldn't help thinking of some of the things that are really working for me at this point in my life that I didn't have 10 years ago. In no particular order, here's what I thought of:
1. Sabbath. Without question, the regular practice of Sabbath taking has changed my life. Collectively, as a family, we have a day that we treat with gentleness and affection. We rest. We protect it. Sometimes it's still hard to pump the breaks when all the other days are so full, but the benefits of declaring in faith, "The world can go on without my help for a few hours" is one of the most important things I do. I've written about Sabbath on my blog several times: Here
2. Stitchfix. Every other month, a get a box of 5 clothing items. Every pair of jeans they have ever sent me fit. If that isn't an advertisement, I don't know what is. Knowing what to wear is confusing and overwhelming at times. Caring for other human beings really cuts into luxurious shopping time. Putting too much pressure on my clothes to express my identity has always been a real problem for me. For those reasons, I'm grateful for this service. It's not always perfect. Sometimes, you get a new stylist and it doesn't work as well. But all in all, this is a time-saver and a confidence-boost for me. Click here if you want to try it.
3. Sulphate Free Shampoo. My friend Natalie told me about this. I was so tired of washing my hair every day and feeling so greasy and gross if I didn't. This is just straight up time back on my clock that is otherwise wasted. Read more: Here.
4. The Enneagram. The Enneagram is an ancient personality tool that has been utilized by various faith traditions for thousands of years, passed on to subsequent generations via oral tradition. In the 1970s, it was written down in a book forms and has become popular again recently as we look to the past to teach us more about the future. I've been aware of the Enneagram for about 5 years now, but recently I read and taught a new book that was written by Ian Crohn and Suzanne Stabile called The Road Back to You. They have a podcast that is a great resource as well. The reason the Enneagram is different from other personality tools is that it is not stationary. Your personality is affected by stress and seasons of growth, and this tools helps you to identify ways to support that growth and health and how to manage your stress better. I have used it extensively in parenting and in my marriage in the past few months and it has given me some confidence in decision-making and helping to understand the complexities of the world and the people in it, especially during this election cycle. The Enneagram helps you to find compassion for others who are very different from you because it helps you to recognize how we all have different basic fears that are driving us. You can take an introductory test here.
5. Therapy. We see a therapist once a month. At first we went for an acute problem, but it is now a safe place for us to check in and get some care for our souls. Together, Robb and I care for a lot of people and problems. It's too much sometimes. I am so grateful for a trusted counselor that helps us keep things from building up into emotional messes. Our therapist is not a "Christian counselor." For us, that was very important. It's too easy to slip into church-y talk and expectations and hide behind that language instead of dealing with real issues. We firmly believe that all truth is God's truth, so we talk about regular things without throwing Christian language over it to somehow baptize our experiences. I'm also super leery of applying spiritual practices to psychological problems. I've seen too much disaster result from that. So bring on the psychological theories and the new language it has given us to talk through our experiences.
6. My Tribe. Like no other time in my life, I lean into the strength my friends give me. They are a sounding board, a mirror, and a safe place like no other. We utilize the technology of private Facebook groups to create the intimacy that is not possible in the larger format of Facebook. I downloaded the free GROUPS app on my iphone and have the settings modulated to allow my closest tribe to access my time and attention whenever there is a need, and to block out all other distractions until I'm ready to interact with them. Not every person in your life deserves access to your time and attention at the same volume. I also meet once a week for coffee with my people at a local coffee shop. That time is sacred time and I am sad about how many years went by without this meaningful time of connection. I'd be lost without it now.
7. Yoga. This has become a healthy expression of faith and humility for me. I still need to lose baby-weight from two years ago, but in the last two months of doing yoga at least 3 times a week, I was able to get into my pre-pregnancy jeans. There is something about it that helps me to simply feel better. I crave better food and I remember to breathe and feel less anxious. I follow a Youtube channel which I can access on my phone or laptop wherever and whenever I want to. I try to get my time in on the mat before I start my days. Check out Yoga with Adriene Here.
8. Susan's. Weekly dates are important, but with four kids and some crazy schedules, a Friday night dress-up date isn't always realistic. What works for us is Saturday mornings at Susan's Restaurant. Having things you can count on takes the pressure off in so many ways. You can count on good coffee. You can count on amazing pie. You can count on excellent service. You can count on the time together to talk about all the things that need to be talked about.
9. The Divine Hours. It's been several years now since I first heard about the spiritual discipline of the Daily Office. This is a series of set hours of prayer that the church has practiced for thousands of years. I didn't not grow up in a Liturgical tradition, but as an adult, I have come to love the hours and seasons of the church calendar. If the year is made up of seasons, the days are made up of hours, and I begin each day with a moment of liturgy utilizing Phyllis Tickle's books, The Divine Hours. I admit that being faithful to mid-day, evening and compline prayers is still something I aspire to, but at the very least, I am committed to a practice of reading and prayer before I pick up my phone to check email. It helps me orient my days and my life according to what I really believe.
10. Getting older. I know the old joke...the only thing worse than getting older is the alternative. But seriously, I think that like a lot of women, I spent a good chunk of my life feeling insecure, doubting myself, fretting about my choices, waiting for permission, being too concerned about what people think, and just generally missing out. That ole Proverbs 31 woman used to bug me. But when I read, "She is clothed with dignity and strength; She laughs at the future." I know I'm on the right track. I never wanted to be the kind of woman who grew older by shrinking up into a tiny ball of grumpy fear. I'm looking at some major things right now. Potty training. Launching a kid to college. Transitioning into a new job. Navigating a weird stage in marriage. And you know what? I'm up of for it. If I can do what I did in the past, I grow large enough to handle all the next things. There is a confidence at this age that is better than any age-defying, color concealing, tummy tucking product that could ever be invented.
So that's my 10 things that are working for me right now. Take whatever works for you!
1. Sabbath. Without question, the regular practice of Sabbath taking has changed my life. Collectively, as a family, we have a day that we treat with gentleness and affection. We rest. We protect it. Sometimes it's still hard to pump the breaks when all the other days are so full, but the benefits of declaring in faith, "The world can go on without my help for a few hours" is one of the most important things I do. I've written about Sabbath on my blog several times: Here
2. Stitchfix. Every other month, a get a box of 5 clothing items. Every pair of jeans they have ever sent me fit. If that isn't an advertisement, I don't know what is. Knowing what to wear is confusing and overwhelming at times. Caring for other human beings really cuts into luxurious shopping time. Putting too much pressure on my clothes to express my identity has always been a real problem for me. For those reasons, I'm grateful for this service. It's not always perfect. Sometimes, you get a new stylist and it doesn't work as well. But all in all, this is a time-saver and a confidence-boost for me. Click here if you want to try it.
3. Sulphate Free Shampoo. My friend Natalie told me about this. I was so tired of washing my hair every day and feeling so greasy and gross if I didn't. This is just straight up time back on my clock that is otherwise wasted. Read more: Here.
4. The Enneagram. The Enneagram is an ancient personality tool that has been utilized by various faith traditions for thousands of years, passed on to subsequent generations via oral tradition. In the 1970s, it was written down in a book forms and has become popular again recently as we look to the past to teach us more about the future. I've been aware of the Enneagram for about 5 years now, but recently I read and taught a new book that was written by Ian Crohn and Suzanne Stabile called The Road Back to You. They have a podcast that is a great resource as well. The reason the Enneagram is different from other personality tools is that it is not stationary. Your personality is affected by stress and seasons of growth, and this tools helps you to identify ways to support that growth and health and how to manage your stress better. I have used it extensively in parenting and in my marriage in the past few months and it has given me some confidence in decision-making and helping to understand the complexities of the world and the people in it, especially during this election cycle. The Enneagram helps you to find compassion for others who are very different from you because it helps you to recognize how we all have different basic fears that are driving us. You can take an introductory test here.
5. Therapy. We see a therapist once a month. At first we went for an acute problem, but it is now a safe place for us to check in and get some care for our souls. Together, Robb and I care for a lot of people and problems. It's too much sometimes. I am so grateful for a trusted counselor that helps us keep things from building up into emotional messes. Our therapist is not a "Christian counselor." For us, that was very important. It's too easy to slip into church-y talk and expectations and hide behind that language instead of dealing with real issues. We firmly believe that all truth is God's truth, so we talk about regular things without throwing Christian language over it to somehow baptize our experiences. I'm also super leery of applying spiritual practices to psychological problems. I've seen too much disaster result from that. So bring on the psychological theories and the new language it has given us to talk through our experiences.
6. My Tribe. Like no other time in my life, I lean into the strength my friends give me. They are a sounding board, a mirror, and a safe place like no other. We utilize the technology of private Facebook groups to create the intimacy that is not possible in the larger format of Facebook. I downloaded the free GROUPS app on my iphone and have the settings modulated to allow my closest tribe to access my time and attention whenever there is a need, and to block out all other distractions until I'm ready to interact with them. Not every person in your life deserves access to your time and attention at the same volume. I also meet once a week for coffee with my people at a local coffee shop. That time is sacred time and I am sad about how many years went by without this meaningful time of connection. I'd be lost without it now.
7. Yoga. This has become a healthy expression of faith and humility for me. I still need to lose baby-weight from two years ago, but in the last two months of doing yoga at least 3 times a week, I was able to get into my pre-pregnancy jeans. There is something about it that helps me to simply feel better. I crave better food and I remember to breathe and feel less anxious. I follow a Youtube channel which I can access on my phone or laptop wherever and whenever I want to. I try to get my time in on the mat before I start my days. Check out Yoga with Adriene Here.
8. Susan's. Weekly dates are important, but with four kids and some crazy schedules, a Friday night dress-up date isn't always realistic. What works for us is Saturday mornings at Susan's Restaurant. Having things you can count on takes the pressure off in so many ways. You can count on good coffee. You can count on amazing pie. You can count on excellent service. You can count on the time together to talk about all the things that need to be talked about.
9. The Divine Hours. It's been several years now since I first heard about the spiritual discipline of the Daily Office. This is a series of set hours of prayer that the church has practiced for thousands of years. I didn't not grow up in a Liturgical tradition, but as an adult, I have come to love the hours and seasons of the church calendar. If the year is made up of seasons, the days are made up of hours, and I begin each day with a moment of liturgy utilizing Phyllis Tickle's books, The Divine Hours. I admit that being faithful to mid-day, evening and compline prayers is still something I aspire to, but at the very least, I am committed to a practice of reading and prayer before I pick up my phone to check email. It helps me orient my days and my life according to what I really believe.
10. Getting older. I know the old joke...the only thing worse than getting older is the alternative. But seriously, I think that like a lot of women, I spent a good chunk of my life feeling insecure, doubting myself, fretting about my choices, waiting for permission, being too concerned about what people think, and just generally missing out. That ole Proverbs 31 woman used to bug me. But when I read, "She is clothed with dignity and strength; She laughs at the future." I know I'm on the right track. I never wanted to be the kind of woman who grew older by shrinking up into a tiny ball of grumpy fear. I'm looking at some major things right now. Potty training. Launching a kid to college. Transitioning into a new job. Navigating a weird stage in marriage. And you know what? I'm up of for it. If I can do what I did in the past, I grow large enough to handle all the next things. There is a confidence at this age that is better than any age-defying, color concealing, tummy tucking product that could ever be invented.
So that's my 10 things that are working for me right now. Take whatever works for you!
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Unstructured Thoughts About Life
I have been much out of the blog habit lately. Obviously.
It is marketing suicide, but my blog is really not very much about hawking my wares
but more about the life behind making things. When I first started the blog, it was the story of starting Vintage, leaving our life in Michigan behind to start our lives over from scratch. That was a good start to an interesting story.
We started the church and it is doing well. We finally bought a house. We've resolved a lot of the issues that were a big deal back then...with the exception of selling the house there, of course. That is still an albatross around our necks. Small rent checks come in, big mortgage payments go out, the house is falling down up there and I periodically lie awake and stare at the ceiling and wonder what will ever happen with the darn thing.
A lot of things have converged in the same six months or so that have me wondering if this is the sequel to my story. So far, it is still be dreamed up. This much I know about the plot...my kids are all in school now but parenting them is still the biggest source of my feeling like I'm doing brain-surgery blindfolded. My marriage is still my best work, but I do need to dust it more to keep it really glossy. I love working as much as ever, but I also have come to live a Sabbath each week that is the most honest act of worship I've got.
With the dawn of the new year, the new decade, in a new house, in a new phase of life I feel like I'm trying to make a list on paper with no lines. It is making me nuts. Some people love paper with no lines...my husband is one of those people. You might as well drop me in the middle of the ocean.
Fortunately, Robb teaches about the core teachings of Vintage every January, which gives me something to lash myself to. And I've been reading Don Miller's new book, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" which is all about living a good story. The Story is one of the core teachings at Vintage, and one of the things that I have felt and loved deeply for as long as I can remember, so Miller's book is finding me at a very sticky time.
He writes about the blandness of our lives, how we spend our lives trying to be comfortable and sheltered from everything that scares us, but then we expect those lives to feel meaningful. "Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who works his whole life for a Volvo." My life is characterized by a lot of that crouching down and being overwhelmed by a broken washing machine. I hate it. I hate the way I treated my kids all day yesterday because I felt like if I could get the house clean, I could brandish some control over the world. All I did was drive them and myself crazy.
I know that life will always be tossing me something...that there is no such thing as standing still. And yet, I live a lot of my life acting like I can somehow freeze-frame it. I act like it won't change. That if i just reach this one place, I will stop feeling like I have to push on the floorboard of the passenger seat to make this car go faster. When my daughter's tenth birthday rushed past me like a bullet by my ear, I may have finally realized that it won't happen. I have to figure out how to live a life that is pliable enough to keep moving. Not a script to live out, but some lines on the paper.
So these are my lines...these are the thin blue lines I chose to write my story on.
Community
Hope
Transformation
and the Story of life as a human... creation, fall, redemption and the Kingdom, or happily ever after.
Those four words have so much to unpack, I could never write them out here in my studio on a day that I need to go to the grocery store and get bread and toothpaste. But they work for me. I think they provide something to guide my wild thoughts and reform my interactions with my kids.
I just can't help thinking that God never intended for me to walk around my whole life wondering if I'm doing this right, if I've done enough for my kids, if I'm wasting my time...navel gazing. I think He wants me to do something with conviction.
Last week, I had a clear vision of it. I embraced interactions with people knowing that they are my community and should be important to me. I donated to Haiti and knew that I could do it because of the work I had done to earn that money. I listened to a podcast about human trafficking that propelled me to order coffee for our church that donates to fight this horrible thing. I counseled. I contributed to meetings. I took part in a baby shower. I fought off the temptation to believe that I was too small to make any difference.
I was exhausted by the end of the week.
Monday caught me by surprise with kids home from school, a broken washing machine, a dog with incontinence, gray skies, and no sense of what I was doing. Fear was driving me like a bus with a bomb on it. By the time I should have been making dinner, I was wandering around the house, trying to find my ear-phones, with the singular belief that if I could just find them, I could get the thin layer of grime off the house, so that I could cook something, so that we could eat, so that we could send the kids to bed, so that I become a vegetable in front of the tv. Triumphant, huh?
I apologized to each of the kids while tucking them in.
Vin is wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday.
I'm up and dressed and going to the grocery store. I am going to try again to write this day on the lines that make sense to me. And I am trying to believe, like I wrote on my notebook during Sunday morning, "I want more than a Volvo."
It is marketing suicide, but my blog is really not very much about hawking my wares
but more about the life behind making things. When I first started the blog, it was the story of starting Vintage, leaving our life in Michigan behind to start our lives over from scratch. That was a good start to an interesting story.
We started the church and it is doing well. We finally bought a house. We've resolved a lot of the issues that were a big deal back then...with the exception of selling the house there, of course. That is still an albatross around our necks. Small rent checks come in, big mortgage payments go out, the house is falling down up there and I periodically lie awake and stare at the ceiling and wonder what will ever happen with the darn thing.
A lot of things have converged in the same six months or so that have me wondering if this is the sequel to my story. So far, it is still be dreamed up. This much I know about the plot...my kids are all in school now but parenting them is still the biggest source of my feeling like I'm doing brain-surgery blindfolded. My marriage is still my best work, but I do need to dust it more to keep it really glossy. I love working as much as ever, but I also have come to live a Sabbath each week that is the most honest act of worship I've got.
With the dawn of the new year, the new decade, in a new house, in a new phase of life I feel like I'm trying to make a list on paper with no lines. It is making me nuts. Some people love paper with no lines...my husband is one of those people. You might as well drop me in the middle of the ocean.
Fortunately, Robb teaches about the core teachings of Vintage every January, which gives me something to lash myself to. And I've been reading Don Miller's new book, "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" which is all about living a good story. The Story is one of the core teachings at Vintage, and one of the things that I have felt and loved deeply for as long as I can remember, so Miller's book is finding me at a very sticky time.
He writes about the blandness of our lives, how we spend our lives trying to be comfortable and sheltered from everything that scares us, but then we expect those lives to feel meaningful. "Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who works his whole life for a Volvo." My life is characterized by a lot of that crouching down and being overwhelmed by a broken washing machine. I hate it. I hate the way I treated my kids all day yesterday because I felt like if I could get the house clean, I could brandish some control over the world. All I did was drive them and myself crazy.
I know that life will always be tossing me something...that there is no such thing as standing still. And yet, I live a lot of my life acting like I can somehow freeze-frame it. I act like it won't change. That if i just reach this one place, I will stop feeling like I have to push on the floorboard of the passenger seat to make this car go faster. When my daughter's tenth birthday rushed past me like a bullet by my ear, I may have finally realized that it won't happen. I have to figure out how to live a life that is pliable enough to keep moving. Not a script to live out, but some lines on the paper.
So these are my lines...these are the thin blue lines I chose to write my story on.
Community
Hope
Transformation
and the Story of life as a human... creation, fall, redemption and the Kingdom, or happily ever after.
Those four words have so much to unpack, I could never write them out here in my studio on a day that I need to go to the grocery store and get bread and toothpaste. But they work for me. I think they provide something to guide my wild thoughts and reform my interactions with my kids.
I just can't help thinking that God never intended for me to walk around my whole life wondering if I'm doing this right, if I've done enough for my kids, if I'm wasting my time...navel gazing. I think He wants me to do something with conviction.
Last week, I had a clear vision of it. I embraced interactions with people knowing that they are my community and should be important to me. I donated to Haiti and knew that I could do it because of the work I had done to earn that money. I listened to a podcast about human trafficking that propelled me to order coffee for our church that donates to fight this horrible thing. I counseled. I contributed to meetings. I took part in a baby shower. I fought off the temptation to believe that I was too small to make any difference.
I was exhausted by the end of the week.
Monday caught me by surprise with kids home from school, a broken washing machine, a dog with incontinence, gray skies, and no sense of what I was doing. Fear was driving me like a bus with a bomb on it. By the time I should have been making dinner, I was wandering around the house, trying to find my ear-phones, with the singular belief that if I could just find them, I could get the thin layer of grime off the house, so that I could cook something, so that we could eat, so that we could send the kids to bed, so that I become a vegetable in front of the tv. Triumphant, huh?
I apologized to each of the kids while tucking them in.
Vin is wearing the same clothes he wore yesterday.
I'm up and dressed and going to the grocery store. I am going to try again to write this day on the lines that make sense to me. And I am trying to believe, like I wrote on my notebook during Sunday morning, "I want more than a Volvo."
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Shivah and Yahrzeit
On September 11, a little girl in my fourth grade class lost her father, a fireman. His name was Geoffry. He was the only person who died that day that I personally knew. So I always think of her and her family on September 11.
Yesterday morning, a friend from Michigan called to read me an obituary. It was the woman who had illegal custody of my daughter before she came to us. The only person who really knew what my daughter's life was like at that formative time. I met her once.
Last night, my first college roommate died of cancer. We had not kept in contact. We weren't really close at all. But we lived together in a little cement block room, sharing a phone and a bathroom and clothes. She was 35. A wife and mother.
Two years ago today, a woman I knew my whole life died of brain tumors. Her oldest of five children was in my small Christian school class where we attended kindergarten through 12th grade together. They lived just down the road my grandparents, and my parents had grown up with them. I knew she was dying, but I didn't actually know she had died until months later. Because when it was announced on Facebook, I was trying to get to Michigan as quickly as possible.
Two years ago today, I was over at Hannah's house, shooting the breeze. It was starting to sprinkle and I decided I had better go back next door, get my phone and call the school to tell them I would pick up the kids. The phone rang while I was standing in my bathroom door, fixing my hair before running out. It was Robb. He was sobbing. My brother in law had been killed in a car accident.
The Jewish custom when someone dies begins with Shivah. It is the first, most intense period of time after a death and funeral. You sit Shivah with someone who has suffered a loss by sitting on low chairs or the floor, to show that life is different now. And you don't talk. You don't say ridiculous, cliche' Christian phrases. You don't dress up and you don't try to do normal things. You sit quietly together and let the bereaved talk when they want to about the deceased. Traditionally, Shiva is a week. Sometimes less.
Shivah is followed by Shloshim, which is the first 30 days. And then Shanna...12 months. And then Yahrzeit is observed, the anniversary of the death. You light a 24 hour candle.
Today, in my heart, I sit Shiva for that woman. I don't say anything good or bad of her. For my roommate, Rachel....someone once part of my daily life...I interrupt my normal day to sit low for her. I feel the loss of my old high school friend for her mother and for my former student who lost her father, and I light a candle for Kevin. I miss you, Man.
Yesterday morning, a friend from Michigan called to read me an obituary. It was the woman who had illegal custody of my daughter before she came to us. The only person who really knew what my daughter's life was like at that formative time. I met her once.
Last night, my first college roommate died of cancer. We had not kept in contact. We weren't really close at all. But we lived together in a little cement block room, sharing a phone and a bathroom and clothes. She was 35. A wife and mother.
Two years ago today, a woman I knew my whole life died of brain tumors. Her oldest of five children was in my small Christian school class where we attended kindergarten through 12th grade together. They lived just down the road my grandparents, and my parents had grown up with them. I knew she was dying, but I didn't actually know she had died until months later. Because when it was announced on Facebook, I was trying to get to Michigan as quickly as possible.
Two years ago today, I was over at Hannah's house, shooting the breeze. It was starting to sprinkle and I decided I had better go back next door, get my phone and call the school to tell them I would pick up the kids. The phone rang while I was standing in my bathroom door, fixing my hair before running out. It was Robb. He was sobbing. My brother in law had been killed in a car accident.
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Several years ago, I read a book by Lauren Winner called Mudhouse Sabbath. She had grown up Jewish and converted to Christianity. But she writes about the strength her Jewish education brought to her Christian faith. Without question, what she wrote about mourning and grief was most powerful for me.The Jewish custom when someone dies begins with Shivah. It is the first, most intense period of time after a death and funeral. You sit Shivah with someone who has suffered a loss by sitting on low chairs or the floor, to show that life is different now. And you don't talk. You don't say ridiculous, cliche' Christian phrases. You don't dress up and you don't try to do normal things. You sit quietly together and let the bereaved talk when they want to about the deceased. Traditionally, Shiva is a week. Sometimes less.
Shivah is followed by Shloshim, which is the first 30 days. And then Shanna...12 months. And then Yahrzeit is observed, the anniversary of the death. You light a 24 hour candle.
Today, in my heart, I sit Shiva for that woman. I don't say anything good or bad of her. For my roommate, Rachel....someone once part of my daily life...I interrupt my normal day to sit low for her. I feel the loss of my old high school friend for her mother and for my former student who lost her father, and I light a candle for Kevin. I miss you, Man.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Sorting...
Well. Before I jump into the pile of work that is rising by the moment, I had better take a minute to survey what is in front of me and try to separate this big pile of mental debris so I can be realistic about what can be done with this day....
Friday: Rehearsal dinner for Erin and Daniel's Wedding. It was driving in the pouring rain that made us realize with white knuckle moments, sliding around on the highway, just how badly we need new tires. In the budget for money, but we've just bonked on making time for it. What a silly way to die...just too busy to change the tires?
Saturday: The big day when we would set up the pool, use the weed-wacker for the first time, and try out the new manual lawn mower I snagged for a mere 3 dollars at an estate sale the day before. The reality: the brand new expensive weedwacker wouldn't start. The pool was mostly set up, but we ran out of time to put on the filter, since we spent such a ridiculous amount of time trying to start the weedwacker. And the grass was much too wet to even try to mow, even after a day of sunshine. The yard is soup. We were sunburned. Went to the wedding and danced like a fool. Exactly the right thing after such a frustrating day. Came home and slept deeply.
Sunday: Church in the morning where I could not concentrate. This is something I can't write about publicly, but I had noise in my head, a frantic static. This situation still has to be addressed and I know how hard it is going to be to address and I don't have the guts to do it right now. It has to wait. My elbows itched.
After church, we headed down to the Block Street Party to support friends who were displaying work there. Heartwood couldn't muster enough volunteer power to man a booth and I couldn't must the strength to make it happen. I feel simultaneously bad about this and glad that I didn't sacrifice my family time and Sabbath for something I couldn't realistically take on. Points to me for recognizing a limit. We ate amazing food from Hammondtree's Grillenium Falcon. Cheese = Comfort. Came home to try to nap a bit while finishing laundry and thinking about what needed to be done before Robb and I could leave for Savannah. Tried to keep our Sunday night tradition of toast and hot chocolate, America's Funniest Home Videos and an episode of Alias on DVD. Folding laundry left over from Saturday kind of bulged in on that. More itchiness, this time on the palms of my hands.
Awoke Monday morning to the news of Joplin's disaster. That file is just too large to process. Had to pack and get ready to go. Covered with itchy spots. Fearing poison ivy until I figured out it was hives. Hurry to the airport. Reminded again to get new tires as we drove in the pouring rain. More white knuckles. Slapping head over not taking the van instead. Breathed a sigh of what we now know was misplaced relief that the worst was over. Flight delayed. And delayed. And delayed. For 4 hours. Finally got on the plane where we flew straight through the storm with heavy turbulence most of the way. I don't deal with motion sickness well. I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate instead of breathing calmly. Nauseous, lips and fingers numb from trying to breathe slowly, feet freezing from the air conditioning at my feet, miserable. Learned later that Robb was scared too. Which means it was bad. Finally, we descended in Atlanta, late, but with enough time to eat a meal and drink a beer. Which helped me sleep through the next, much smoother flight. Where a baby behind us wailed miserably through take off and landing. Poor little thing. I wished I could join him.
We had high hopes of having Monday evening to relax and see Savannah a bit, but it was late. We crashed. I awoke to blistered hives everywhere. I took a Claritin for the first time in my life and was grateful when it halted the swelling I could feel in my lip at the hotel breakfast room. We had a couple of hours to spend before starting the book buying, so we headed out about 40 minutes to the edge of Tybee Island where we saw dolphins (and took work calls) on the pier. We didn't realize that that couple of hours on that 96 degree pier would be the best part of the whole trip.
From noon to six that day, we were in a room the size of my bathroom with no windows buying used textbooks. I will not elaborate on that part of the day. Except that I understand now why Robb dreads traveling.
By this time, we knew that horrible weather was headed in the direction of our kids and home. Back at the hotel, we were glued to the Weather channel, waiting for the worst. Completely helpless. Outside, Savannah was balmy and beautiful but we couldn't enjoy it. Calculating that we were in for a long night, we walked to a restaurant and ate on their rooftop terrace to fortify us for whatever we would face that night. We communicated almost nonstop with friends and family on our phones, grateful for our friend Adam who was staying with the kids. He made the decision to take them to the University campus where he lives and works, knowing they would be safer in the cement walls of the dorms than our subdivision if anything really went wrong. We sat with phones, open laptops and the Weather Channel long into the night, watching the storms pound Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. The storms broke around home, to the north and south of us. Adam reported that everything was fine. To the south of home, things were bad.
Exhausted from the short night, we had to be back at the school at 8 a.m. to finish the book-buying by noon, pack up the boxes, do the paperwork, arrange a truck for shipping, fed-ex the printers and supplies back to Robb's work and get lunch. It was 98 degrees. The hives were the worst that morning, but the Claritin worked. After a busy morning of book buying, we had a few hours and drove out to St. Boneventure Cemetery. I don't know why, but cemeteries tend to relax me. It was beautiful and theatrical, just like all of Savannah, a town that knows who it is and has no need to try to be anything else. I took a lot of pictures.
And then it was time to go back to the airport, where were delayed again, but prepared with an overnight bag if we couldn't get back home. Savannah to Atlanta was short and smooth. We didnt' have enough time for a sit down meal in the ATL airport, and had our supper on our knees, sitting in very full plane that had to stop on the runway for a mechanical glitch and get back in line for take off, and then in flight, the pilot decided to skirt the storms that were hitting Little Rock and Memphis, which took longer, but resulted in a much smoother and less terrifying flight.
Robb rejoiced that it was not raining as we drove home, kissed our sleeping babies, and sank into bed, exhausted. Not the happy getaway we hoped for. In fact, we mutually agreed that it was the worst trip ever.
Here at home, I have boxes to ship. The flea market to stock. Phonecalls to make. Sales to attend. Menus to make. Housework to do.
But I am home. And we are safe. And the car is going to the shop.
Friday: Rehearsal dinner for Erin and Daniel's Wedding. It was driving in the pouring rain that made us realize with white knuckle moments, sliding around on the highway, just how badly we need new tires. In the budget for money, but we've just bonked on making time for it. What a silly way to die...just too busy to change the tires?
Saturday: The big day when we would set up the pool, use the weed-wacker for the first time, and try out the new manual lawn mower I snagged for a mere 3 dollars at an estate sale the day before. The reality: the brand new expensive weedwacker wouldn't start. The pool was mostly set up, but we ran out of time to put on the filter, since we spent such a ridiculous amount of time trying to start the weedwacker. And the grass was much too wet to even try to mow, even after a day of sunshine. The yard is soup. We were sunburned. Went to the wedding and danced like a fool. Exactly the right thing after such a frustrating day. Came home and slept deeply.
Sunday: Church in the morning where I could not concentrate. This is something I can't write about publicly, but I had noise in my head, a frantic static. This situation still has to be addressed and I know how hard it is going to be to address and I don't have the guts to do it right now. It has to wait. My elbows itched.
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| At the Block Street Party |
After church, we headed down to the Block Street Party to support friends who were displaying work there. Heartwood couldn't muster enough volunteer power to man a booth and I couldn't must the strength to make it happen. I feel simultaneously bad about this and glad that I didn't sacrifice my family time and Sabbath for something I couldn't realistically take on. Points to me for recognizing a limit. We ate amazing food from Hammondtree's Grillenium Falcon. Cheese = Comfort. Came home to try to nap a bit while finishing laundry and thinking about what needed to be done before Robb and I could leave for Savannah. Tried to keep our Sunday night tradition of toast and hot chocolate, America's Funniest Home Videos and an episode of Alias on DVD. Folding laundry left over from Saturday kind of bulged in on that. More itchiness, this time on the palms of my hands. Awoke Monday morning to the news of Joplin's disaster. That file is just too large to process. Had to pack and get ready to go. Covered with itchy spots. Fearing poison ivy until I figured out it was hives. Hurry to the airport. Reminded again to get new tires as we drove in the pouring rain. More white knuckles. Slapping head over not taking the van instead. Breathed a sigh of what we now know was misplaced relief that the worst was over. Flight delayed. And delayed. And delayed. For 4 hours. Finally got on the plane where we flew straight through the storm with heavy turbulence most of the way. I don't deal with motion sickness well. I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate instead of breathing calmly. Nauseous, lips and fingers numb from trying to breathe slowly, feet freezing from the air conditioning at my feet, miserable. Learned later that Robb was scared too. Which means it was bad. Finally, we descended in Atlanta, late, but with enough time to eat a meal and drink a beer. Which helped me sleep through the next, much smoother flight. Where a baby behind us wailed miserably through take off and landing. Poor little thing. I wished I could join him.
From noon to six that day, we were in a room the size of my bathroom with no windows buying used textbooks. I will not elaborate on that part of the day. Except that I understand now why Robb dreads traveling.
By this time, we knew that horrible weather was headed in the direction of our kids and home. Back at the hotel, we were glued to the Weather channel, waiting for the worst. Completely helpless. Outside, Savannah was balmy and beautiful but we couldn't enjoy it. Calculating that we were in for a long night, we walked to a restaurant and ate on their rooftop terrace to fortify us for whatever we would face that night. We communicated almost nonstop with friends and family on our phones, grateful for our friend Adam who was staying with the kids. He made the decision to take them to the University campus where he lives and works, knowing they would be safer in the cement walls of the dorms than our subdivision if anything really went wrong. We sat with phones, open laptops and the Weather Channel long into the night, watching the storms pound Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. The storms broke around home, to the north and south of us. Adam reported that everything was fine. To the south of home, things were bad.
Exhausted from the short night, we had to be back at the school at 8 a.m. to finish the book-buying by noon, pack up the boxes, do the paperwork, arrange a truck for shipping, fed-ex the printers and supplies back to Robb's work and get lunch. It was 98 degrees. The hives were the worst that morning, but the Claritin worked. After a busy morning of book buying, we had a few hours and drove out to St. Boneventure Cemetery. I don't know why, but cemeteries tend to relax me. It was beautiful and theatrical, just like all of Savannah, a town that knows who it is and has no need to try to be anything else. I took a lot of pictures.
And then it was time to go back to the airport, where were delayed again, but prepared with an overnight bag if we couldn't get back home. Savannah to Atlanta was short and smooth. We didnt' have enough time for a sit down meal in the ATL airport, and had our supper on our knees, sitting in very full plane that had to stop on the runway for a mechanical glitch and get back in line for take off, and then in flight, the pilot decided to skirt the storms that were hitting Little Rock and Memphis, which took longer, but resulted in a much smoother and less terrifying flight.
 | |
| From the plane window, storm over Little Rock |
Robb rejoiced that it was not raining as we drove home, kissed our sleeping babies, and sank into bed, exhausted. Not the happy getaway we hoped for. In fact, we mutually agreed that it was the worst trip ever.
Here at home, I have boxes to ship. The flea market to stock. Phonecalls to make. Sales to attend. Menus to make. Housework to do.
But I am home. And we are safe. And the car is going to the shop.
Monday, December 03, 2007
Looking forward to Christmas
I am really excited for Christmas this year. Some years, it is really stressful, like when you move on December 29th and the church leaves you a note saying "please clean the parsonage before you go." Or when you move on December 29th because you are renting from church members and they jack the rent to 1000 a month and so you have to move to a 3rd floor apartment in a town 30 minutes away. Or you move on December 29th and the truck with all your stuff breaks down in Jamestown, NY and you are four months pregnant and sleep on the floor of a drafty rental house and catch your death of a cold. Or when you just flat out don't have any money...that's stressful too.
But this year, I won the Pioneer Woman's contest and so we still don't have any money, but we got to go shopping any way and so I'm am heretofore, excited about Christmas. I decorated full-on on Saturday and look forward to doing a little more today...with pictures to ensue.
I have sometimes wondered about the appropriateness of celebration. In the circles where I grew up, celebration was fine as long as you were dressed properly, didn't show undo amounts of emotion such as raising of your hands or shouting, and expressed distain for enjoying yourself in solidarity for the many unhappy and poor and destitute people in the world. And of course, no dancing or drinking, but you were welcome to gluttony.
But ever since reading Lauren Winner's delightful Mudhouse Sabbath, I have taken a different stance on celebration. It seems that seasons of celebration were mandatory for the children of God. He mandated joyous traditions that incorporated all the senses and with regularity, set seasons of both celebration and introspection in place. It is apparently honoring to God to enter into all the ranges of human emotion. I began to see my "holding back" as a way of holding back on honoring God.
And so, I'm celebrating...hanging lights, planning cookies and parties, making wreaths, decorating, lighting candles, cuddling up with my family, looking forward to Christmas with an open heart.
But this year, I won the Pioneer Woman's contest and so we still don't have any money, but we got to go shopping any way and so I'm am heretofore, excited about Christmas. I decorated full-on on Saturday and look forward to doing a little more today...with pictures to ensue.
I have sometimes wondered about the appropriateness of celebration. In the circles where I grew up, celebration was fine as long as you were dressed properly, didn't show undo amounts of emotion such as raising of your hands or shouting, and expressed distain for enjoying yourself in solidarity for the many unhappy and poor and destitute people in the world. And of course, no dancing or drinking, but you were welcome to gluttony.
But ever since reading Lauren Winner's delightful Mudhouse Sabbath, I have taken a different stance on celebration. It seems that seasons of celebration were mandatory for the children of God. He mandated joyous traditions that incorporated all the senses and with regularity, set seasons of both celebration and introspection in place. It is apparently honoring to God to enter into all the ranges of human emotion. I began to see my "holding back" as a way of holding back on honoring God.
And so, I'm celebrating...hanging lights, planning cookies and parties, making wreaths, decorating, lighting candles, cuddling up with my family, looking forward to Christmas with an open heart.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
What happens at Bookclub stays at Bookclub
About 6 weeks ago, to give an opportunity for fellowship, we began a women's ministry at Vintage. Since we had so many people interested in it, we decided to offer a book club and a Bible study. Both groups have been very well attended. I opted for the book club since that seemed a little more manageable to me.
We are nearly finished now with the delightful Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath. There's no way to say with any certainty that it is the book that has bonded us, or if the chemistry was all right there to begin with, but this has really become one of those extraordinary experiences that you look back on and say, "Wow, everything was different after that."
It is part of the code that we keep the confidences of the group to ourselves, but I can say that this group has been one of the best parts of my life this summer.
Monday, July 16, 2007
What's in your Wallet?
You know those dumb Capitol One commercials? That's not what this post is about. It's actually more just for girls...and the real question is, what is in your purse? I just reached into mine and pulled out a wet pair of underpants (Charleigh's, not mine) and thought, "I wonder if other people have a wet pair of Dora The Explorer undies in their purses?"
Here are some of the other odd items I have currently:
an all-purpose tool which once caused me to be put on the list of dangerous people in airports
a smashed granola bar and two Twizzlers
sparkly fish stickers
Chik-fil-a coupons
a copy of Mud-house Sabbath by Lauren Winner
A hair-pick. I haven't had a perm in about 15 years, but I carry a hair-pick.
The CD's my friend Candice made for me
19 envelopes full of grocery coupons
Sara's copy of their marriage survey for our next pre-marital session
My other pair of glasses...which are handy because sometimes I forget to wear my other ones and have trouble seeing the garage sale signs.
Notice I don't have any makeup, not even a chapstick. Nor do I have any medication. Or wet wipes. Or kleenex. Or band-aids (they used them all). Or feminine products. I am basically worthless in an emergency, unless you need a knife.
So what goofy things are in your purse?
Monday, April 19, 2010
It's hard not to live for weekends...
...when they were as enjoyable as this past one.
Friday was a busy day for me, as I ran out the door early so I could stop at the flea market and check on things there, and then head down to the Fayetteville recycling center to get some mulch for my front flower bed...which is enormous and needed a lot of love to recover from a year of being un-cared for before we moved in last fall. Here's a tip. If you are pining for a bulk load of mulch but drive a minivan instead of a pick-up truck, try using those big rubbermaid 5 gallon totes. I lined them up and the guy at the recycling center just dropped a load from the front-loader on top of them. They weren't so big that I couldn't carry them and it required no shoveling at all. Of course, my van still smells like cedar, but there are worse smells on earth.
Moving on. Spent a quiet day at the Heartwood Gallery. Probably a little too quiet, but I did finish quite a few small things while I was "working." Locked up and drove my mulch over to meet hubby for a lovely date: attending our friend Sara's graduate program senior reading. I had never been inside of Old Main before and it was the perfect setting for Sara's exquisite poetry. We followed up with dinner with friends at Taste of Thai. Robb's leftover Evil Jungle Prince is already making my mouth water when I think about my lunch plans for today.
Saturday morning, I was proud to roll out of bed by 7:30 a.m. and go out to unload that mulch. With that job well done, we took the beautiful drive to Ozark Custom Butchering to pick up our half a cow. "Half of the black one" to be more specific. Our local, grass fed cow led a good life and fulfilled its destiny to feed our family and friends; he is now in my freezer in well-marked packages.
In an unbelievably well-timed coincidence, all three kids were invited to a birthday party at the Starlight Skatium at the exact same time Robb and I wanted to be at the Springdale Convention Center for the Republican candidate debate and the NWA Boutique Show (respectively). Seriously, what are the chances of that happening?
At the show, which I confess I was mostly scoping out to see if I wanted to take part in the future, I was thrilled to meet a recently featured artist on Etsy, Tim's Sally. I was smitten by her work and thrilled to find something I had been looking for: a representation of Charleigh for my entryway. By chance, I have collected some portraits that resemble Robb and Calvin, and I still marvel at Mattie's second-grade self portrait in oil pastels. When I found a wee painting of a girl named Spice, I knew I had found my Charleigh, (aka our little Spicy Chalupa) portrait.
Back at home, Robb made us Juicy Lucys...a burger featured on Man vs. Food which he tried out on his recent trip to Minneapolis. Delish.
And on Sunday, we got to be with our Vintage family, which was nothing short of baby-tastic this week. I got my fix holding Princess Addison who is growing from a five pound bag of sugar to a ever-snoozing 7 pounder just a few weeks since birth. After an always-encouraging lunch meeting with our Oversight Team, we headed home for the truly sacred ritual of the Sabbath nap followed by our family tradition of AFV and Minute to Win It accompanied with toast and hot chocolate for supper.
This linktastic post brought to you by a truly blissful weekend.
Friday was a busy day for me, as I ran out the door early so I could stop at the flea market and check on things there, and then head down to the Fayetteville recycling center to get some mulch for my front flower bed...which is enormous and needed a lot of love to recover from a year of being un-cared for before we moved in last fall. Here's a tip. If you are pining for a bulk load of mulch but drive a minivan instead of a pick-up truck, try using those big rubbermaid 5 gallon totes. I lined them up and the guy at the recycling center just dropped a load from the front-loader on top of them. They weren't so big that I couldn't carry them and it required no shoveling at all. Of course, my van still smells like cedar, but there are worse smells on earth.
Moving on. Spent a quiet day at the Heartwood Gallery. Probably a little too quiet, but I did finish quite a few small things while I was "working." Locked up and drove my mulch over to meet hubby for a lovely date: attending our friend Sara's graduate program senior reading. I had never been inside of Old Main before and it was the perfect setting for Sara's exquisite poetry. We followed up with dinner with friends at Taste of Thai. Robb's leftover Evil Jungle Prince is already making my mouth water when I think about my lunch plans for today.
Saturday morning, I was proud to roll out of bed by 7:30 a.m. and go out to unload that mulch. With that job well done, we took the beautiful drive to Ozark Custom Butchering to pick up our half a cow. "Half of the black one" to be more specific. Our local, grass fed cow led a good life and fulfilled its destiny to feed our family and friends; he is now in my freezer in well-marked packages.
In an unbelievably well-timed coincidence, all three kids were invited to a birthday party at the Starlight Skatium at the exact same time Robb and I wanted to be at the Springdale Convention Center for the Republican candidate debate and the NWA Boutique Show (respectively). Seriously, what are the chances of that happening?
At the show, which I confess I was mostly scoping out to see if I wanted to take part in the future, I was thrilled to meet a recently featured artist on Etsy, Tim's Sally. I was smitten by her work and thrilled to find something I had been looking for: a representation of Charleigh for my entryway. By chance, I have collected some portraits that resemble Robb and Calvin, and I still marvel at Mattie's second-grade self portrait in oil pastels. When I found a wee painting of a girl named Spice, I knew I had found my Charleigh, (aka our little Spicy Chalupa) portrait.
Back at home, Robb made us Juicy Lucys...a burger featured on Man vs. Food which he tried out on his recent trip to Minneapolis. Delish.
And on Sunday, we got to be with our Vintage family, which was nothing short of baby-tastic this week. I got my fix holding Princess Addison who is growing from a five pound bag of sugar to a ever-snoozing 7 pounder just a few weeks since birth. After an always-encouraging lunch meeting with our Oversight Team, we headed home for the truly sacred ritual of the Sabbath nap followed by our family tradition of AFV and Minute to Win It accompanied with toast and hot chocolate for supper.
This linktastic post brought to you by a truly blissful weekend.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Oh Christmas Tree
By an impish set of circumstances, the only time we could all be together to decorate this beast was at 6 a.m. this morning. Last night, Robb was prepping for a trip this weekend, and the night before that was youth group. The night before that was a church meeting, and the night before that, we were still celebrating Thanksgiving! But if we waited another day, Robb was away until Monday and we'd be so late getting around to decorating, when would I ever make the Christmas cookies my neighbor has been raving about all year long?
And so, at six this morning, the alarm went off and the Christmas music went on. The lights were already on, so the kids just needed hot chocolate and the green light to start hanging way too many of their favorite heavy ornaments on the same bendy branch. There was the usual bickering over "MY ORNAMENT!" but overall, it was rather fun.
After a nap this afternoon, I was ready to tackle some of the peripheral decor. Tomorrow promises to be nice and warm, so I will probably be shimmying up the ladder to hang some outdoor pretties.
I feel better equipped to actually celebrate this holiday than I ever have. All my life, I have heard what you are supposed to feel like about Christmas, but I never really did. I just played along. This year, through a combination of things, I am more aware than ever of the things that are wrong with the world, but that heartbreak and longing point me to my faith that someday, The Prince of Peace will come and the fairy tale ending will really happen. I am approaching Christmas in the rhythm of Advent, and it helps me to connect the same feeling I have for a blessed Sabbath with Christmas. I've never made that connection before, but this year, it is deep in my consciousness and I feel more excited than I ever have to celebrate, and celebrate well.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
how'm I gonna fit this great big post into dis little box?
I have so much to write about, I don't know how I will be able to get it all in...
I am amazingly refreshed. (Notice I didn't say that I am refreshing because I just mowed the lawn and I frankly stink like a thing, as we say here.) But I do feel alive and present in my life for the first time in a while and it is a pretty amazing feeling. Robb's parents took the two older kids to MI with them for a week and then dropped them off in PA with my parents on their way back to VA. That was some logisitical feat, let me tell you. That left Robb and I with just Charleigh for a week, and she still sleeps a lot. Good times.
Then, early Saturday morning, we loaded up the car and hit the road: destination, upstate NY, with a pitstop at my parent's house to say "hi" to the kids (who stayed with Poppa and Nana while we went on to camp: making that 2 weeks with just one kid). We filled the cooler, listened to books on CD and had a very smooth and long road trip through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Dayton, Columbus and then the relative boon-docks of northwestern PA. I think what made it fly by was the books on CD...
I am still reeling from our first choice called, "Under the Overpass" which was the record of two college students who chose to live as homeless men in 6 cities for six months. The book chronicles their experiences as Christians looking at the world from a very different vantage point in the heat of Washington DC, the damp of Portland, OR, the cold of San Francisco, the misery of Phoenix and finally San Diego. It was truly an amazing story and I feel like an idiot for not being able to put into words how this story will stick in my brain. These guys are young and idealistic and have hearts of gold. I can only imagine how this choice will affect the lives of many people who hear their story.
Next, we took in Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath, a book I've wanted to read for a long time. Winner is one of my favorite writers and I loved this effort to explain how Christians can benefit from the deep tradition of orthodox Judaism. I'll be thinking about this one too.
We also polished off another "reading" of Velvet Elvis. Man, that book is something.
After a laid back Sunday at Mom and Dad's, we had another 6 hour drive to Camp Bayouca, where Robb was the speaker for Junior High week 1. You can check out his anecdotes on the Grenzian. I personally love this gig. Robb is doing what he loves, where he loves to be, so it is more like a vacation than anything. The Missionary Cottage (or Lucky Lake House, as we like to call it) sits down by the lake and I spent big chunks of time lying on the dock, reading and chilling. Charleigh played in the sand and water, and I took her out for a canoe ride (I love to canoe). Robb and I had tons of time together and on Friday, my fellow-venturer and good friend Amy hit the sales in the pouring rain. She introduced me to the collossal "Thrify Shopper" store and we guiltily tore ourselves away after about 3 solid hours of heavy thrifting. Good stuff, friends. Pretty much the very definition of a perfect week.
One of the great things that also evolved was that Sara came back to AR with us. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Sara was in the youth group in our church in MI, just graduated from Bible college, and is basically a member of the family. We haven't decided if she is our sister or the daughter I had at the age of 10, but basically she has indentured herself to us to serve in any way possible. ( You can check out her blog at hopebeundismayed@blogspot.com) And just to make sure that she didn't get away, I tampered with her car. Just kidding....it turns out there is a limit on how far a 91 Geo Prism transmission will go. Just outside Elmira, NY, would be the precise location. So we ditched it. Right there. Bye Bye little Suzy. Hello Pick-A-Part. (anybody out there got a car they are looking to get rid of cheap?). For those of you keeping score, that's three adults, one car.
Interesting factoid: I think it is hotter and slightly more miserable in northwestern PA than it is in Arkansas. That might be because of the insane humidity or the complete lack of air conditioning, or perhaps even because my poor parent's basement flooded ...again. The kids had fun with Poppa and Nana, but don't call there anytime soon because I'm pretty sure they are sleeping...round the clock.
So here we are again. We have more work to do than is probably humanly possible. We now have two jobs to find and a car and all that jazz. Another Vintage service on Sunday looms with lots of unfinished work. I have apparently lost all the important papers needed to enroll the children for school, but don't tell them because they are already nervous little wrecks. But hey...we still have a couple of weeks of summer left and I feel happy. Relaxed. Chill. It feels nice.
I am amazingly refreshed. (Notice I didn't say that I am refreshing because I just mowed the lawn and I frankly stink like a thing, as we say here.) But I do feel alive and present in my life for the first time in a while and it is a pretty amazing feeling. Robb's parents took the two older kids to MI with them for a week and then dropped them off in PA with my parents on their way back to VA. That was some logisitical feat, let me tell you. That left Robb and I with just Charleigh for a week, and she still sleeps a lot. Good times.
Then, early Saturday morning, we loaded up the car and hit the road: destination, upstate NY, with a pitstop at my parent's house to say "hi" to the kids (who stayed with Poppa and Nana while we went on to camp: making that 2 weeks with just one kid). We filled the cooler, listened to books on CD and had a very smooth and long road trip through St. Louis, Indianapolis, Dayton, Columbus and then the relative boon-docks of northwestern PA. I think what made it fly by was the books on CD...
I am still reeling from our first choice called, "Under the Overpass" which was the record of two college students who chose to live as homeless men in 6 cities for six months. The book chronicles their experiences as Christians looking at the world from a very different vantage point in the heat of Washington DC, the damp of Portland, OR, the cold of San Francisco, the misery of Phoenix and finally San Diego. It was truly an amazing story and I feel like an idiot for not being able to put into words how this story will stick in my brain. These guys are young and idealistic and have hearts of gold. I can only imagine how this choice will affect the lives of many people who hear their story.
Next, we took in Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath, a book I've wanted to read for a long time. Winner is one of my favorite writers and I loved this effort to explain how Christians can benefit from the deep tradition of orthodox Judaism. I'll be thinking about this one too.
We also polished off another "reading" of Velvet Elvis. Man, that book is something.
After a laid back Sunday at Mom and Dad's, we had another 6 hour drive to Camp Bayouca, where Robb was the speaker for Junior High week 1. You can check out his anecdotes on the Grenzian. I personally love this gig. Robb is doing what he loves, where he loves to be, so it is more like a vacation than anything. The Missionary Cottage (or Lucky Lake House, as we like to call it) sits down by the lake and I spent big chunks of time lying on the dock, reading and chilling. Charleigh played in the sand and water, and I took her out for a canoe ride (I love to canoe). Robb and I had tons of time together and on Friday, my fellow-venturer and good friend Amy hit the sales in the pouring rain. She introduced me to the collossal "Thrify Shopper" store and we guiltily tore ourselves away after about 3 solid hours of heavy thrifting. Good stuff, friends. Pretty much the very definition of a perfect week.
One of the great things that also evolved was that Sara came back to AR with us. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Sara was in the youth group in our church in MI, just graduated from Bible college, and is basically a member of the family. We haven't decided if she is our sister or the daughter I had at the age of 10, but basically she has indentured herself to us to serve in any way possible. ( You can check out her blog at hopebeundismayed@blogspot.com) And just to make sure that she didn't get away, I tampered with her car. Just kidding....it turns out there is a limit on how far a 91 Geo Prism transmission will go. Just outside Elmira, NY, would be the precise location. So we ditched it. Right there. Bye Bye little Suzy. Hello Pick-A-Part. (anybody out there got a car they are looking to get rid of cheap?). For those of you keeping score, that's three adults, one car.
Interesting factoid: I think it is hotter and slightly more miserable in northwestern PA than it is in Arkansas. That might be because of the insane humidity or the complete lack of air conditioning, or perhaps even because my poor parent's basement flooded ...again. The kids had fun with Poppa and Nana, but don't call there anytime soon because I'm pretty sure they are sleeping...round the clock.
So here we are again. We have more work to do than is probably humanly possible. We now have two jobs to find and a car and all that jazz. Another Vintage service on Sunday looms with lots of unfinished work. I have apparently lost all the important papers needed to enroll the children for school, but don't tell them because they are already nervous little wrecks. But hey...we still have a couple of weeks of summer left and I feel happy. Relaxed. Chill. It feels nice.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Laundry on Sunday
kissed a boo boo, ate a couple gumdrops, thought some more about the grouchy thing and it really hit me...as I was changing the laundry.
I used to have a little rule for myself...I didn't do laundry on Sunday. It wasn't a legalistic, keeping the Sabbath kind of thing....just a way that Sunday was special. I didn't work on eBay. I didn't help Mattie with school stuff. I always made a big Sunday dinner. I didn't feel guilty about sitting around all afternoon.
We went to Saturday night service last night because we kind of prefer it, but I was getting some coffee and a guy came up while I was getting mine and made a joke about needing the regular, not the decaf....and he looked like Doug...I just smiled blankly...
I miss my old life. I miss having a great purposeful activity that our whole week was oriented to. I miss meeting my groggy friends in the kitchen at church, stealing coffee that hadn't even made it into the pot yet. I miss making an effort to NOT be grouchy for all those who would be. I miss not doing laundry on Sunday. I miss sitting around on Sunday afternoon after having a really good meal, talking with Joel and Shari, wearing my apron. I miss the kids being clean on Saturday night. I miss the order and rhythm it all created. I hate it that Robb has to work on Sundays. Yeah, yeah, he worked on Sundays before....but you know what I mean.
I woke up grouchy this morning because I wanted this day to be special in some way, but at 6:30, the cartoons were on, the laundry was piled sky high, and I didn't really appreciate the fact that "we didn't have do anything today." I can't come up with a good reason to put off the things I don't normally do on Sundays. But I hate doing them.
I used to have a little rule for myself...I didn't do laundry on Sunday. It wasn't a legalistic, keeping the Sabbath kind of thing....just a way that Sunday was special. I didn't work on eBay. I didn't help Mattie with school stuff. I always made a big Sunday dinner. I didn't feel guilty about sitting around all afternoon.
We went to Saturday night service last night because we kind of prefer it, but I was getting some coffee and a guy came up while I was getting mine and made a joke about needing the regular, not the decaf....and he looked like Doug...I just smiled blankly...
I miss my old life. I miss having a great purposeful activity that our whole week was oriented to. I miss meeting my groggy friends in the kitchen at church, stealing coffee that hadn't even made it into the pot yet. I miss making an effort to NOT be grouchy for all those who would be. I miss not doing laundry on Sunday. I miss sitting around on Sunday afternoon after having a really good meal, talking with Joel and Shari, wearing my apron. I miss the kids being clean on Saturday night. I miss the order and rhythm it all created. I hate it that Robb has to work on Sundays. Yeah, yeah, he worked on Sundays before....but you know what I mean.
I woke up grouchy this morning because I wanted this day to be special in some way, but at 6:30, the cartoons were on, the laundry was piled sky high, and I didn't really appreciate the fact that "we didn't have do anything today." I can't come up with a good reason to put off the things I don't normally do on Sundays. But I hate doing them.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Stubborn
Periodically, it seems that I am compelled to go to the mat with God himself and wrestle him until one of us calls uncle. I think I usually call uncle, but maybe He would say the same thing. I suspect our perspective is quite different.
It started on Saturday this time. Robb had to leave for a trade show for the whole weekend, which was abhorrent to both of us. This is the first time he's had to travel over "Vintage family time," but his boss was insistent that he go despite all his protests. And so, after a long Saturday of chores and work, the Vesper service loomed large on my radar. I did not want to go. As the time drew near to get ready, the kids finally got into a good playing groove for the first time all day. And I was mid project. The weather was mild. I hate to stop mid project. No really, I HATE it. But I was resigned to go because I knew how much work my friends had put into getting it ready.
Vintage Vesper services are times of liturgical reading, sitting quietly in the dark with candlelight, with almost a performance art kind of quality. The first time, I was captivated. This time, I expected to settle in and find some reward for attending, but the kids were antsy and bickered with one another over their seats and I was not relaxing at all. As the times of silence drew on, I could feel an inner turmoil rising in my chest, which felt like the beginnings of a panic attack. Internally, I was screaming, "I don't want to be here! I'm here but I am not here. I'm not here, God." Finally, I closed my eyes and told God what I had been thinking all along....that I was angry with Him. I was angry that Robb was on a trip when he should be at home. I was angry that instead of my business doing well so that we can have Robb full time at Vintage, my business was the worst it has ever been. This month has been terrible. I was angry that God just seemed to have forgotten about us....that He seemed completely unconcerned about my prayers all that day to move things, to comfort me, reassure me that we are on the right path, give me some insight, just act like He is listening...
"Hide not our face from your servant; be swift and answer me, for I am in distress." flashed across the screen.
Being honest with God is ugly business. But he already knows, so why not have the satisfaction of saying it. So I said it. When I opened my eyes, the words that danced from the projector said this "My grief is this: That the right hand of the Most High has lost is power."
That. That, God. What the Psalmist said. That's it.
I went home, knowing that He heard me at least. That my request had been received at central processing and I would be notified of further changes when the bureaucracy of Heaven had reviewed my hopes and dreams.
Oh hey, don't get me wrong. Don't think I don't know that my hopes and dreams are subject to the approval of God's will. But what is so bad about my wanting my husband at home?
So, scurry, feed the kids dinner.... Junk, again. *Sigh.* My own pants are too tight. The scale is registering higher than it ever has before. Another battle that must be faced. Baths and bedtime. Hugs and kisses. We miss Daddy.
Sunday morning is all wrong without him. A well-oiled machine, minus the one main cog, barely functions. Once at church, I feel strangely ok. I hear that we have to fight. Sometimes with one another and sometimes with God himself. Because in the fighting, you gain an intimacy that you never would without the fight. That a tested relationship is better than an untested one. I am thinking about the changes that have to made at the Gallery and how I am leading the meeting on Wednesday and how some are opposed to the changes and one even sent me a nasty email about it. The conflict ahead is on my mind. Someone asks me, "Is that really the best venue for you? Is there someplace else that would be a better fit? " And I am struck by the realization that many of my experiences as a pastor's wife all these years actually matter in this case. My past experience is actually useful for something more than painfully amusing anecdotes with other people in ministry jobs. I have no guarantee of success but I have the best shot of anyone at this point.
Sunday afternoon should be sabbath rest time. I try. But my mind is too busy and I sneak work on my computer while I should be napping, reading something pleasant, trusting God with my concerns enough to stop poking at the smoldering piles that I wish would just ignite already.
I emerge to feed the kids dinner more distracted and irritated than ever. The girls want to watch the Oscars and Vin wants to watch a movie. We eat more junk food. I loathe myself. My soul feels scratchy.
I try to settle in and get lost in the fluffy entertainment. The dog starts to bark and growl and I turn to see a face pressed against the glass of my front door. It is my neighbor. Non verbal, autistic, young, but big and uncannily strong for his age. He shouldn't be out alone. He fumbles with the door knob and I guiltily lock the door. "I will call your Mom." I say loudly, but trying to be reassuring. The equal forces of compassion and concern for this boy, adrenaline from being startled and guilt for being afraid of him throbbed in my ears and left my hands shaky as I rifled the drawers looking for my neighbor's phone number. He left. I felt more guilt and fear for letting him leave. I finally found the number and called.
He's home safe. She saw the door open and called for him and he came right home. Did I sound like the ignorant fearful to her? I worried. I am compassionate for my neighbor but I also remember Robb's first job with mentally handicapped adults, some with un-human strength. Why do I have to be so weak and pathetic?
Unnerved, I sent the kids to bed. Tried to get interested in something. Went to bed myself, with a re-run of an old tv show to drone out my own thoughts. In the dark, with just the screen's light, I tried to relax. The wind was picking up. Suddenly, I felt the bed move, as if one of the children had pushed against it. "Who's there?" I sat up, startled. No answer. Turned on the light. The storm began to howl outside and so I checked the weather website. Tornadoes possible. Relaxing was off the table. It was time to stand guard again. "Alone again." I was remembering being alone during the big ice storm a few years ago. How I wrestled with God then, too. We had a veritable death match that time while Robb was stuck in Georgia with a suitcase full of much needed firewood to bring home... if he could get home. Ice storms, snow storms, and now a tornado, God? I got back in bed assuming that if my Netflix network connection was lost, I would know to go get the kids from upstairs. The storm got louder and one by one, the children appeared at my bedside. It was muggy with the four of us scrunched together, but at least we were together.
In the morning, I learned that odd thump against my bed was an earthquake. The tv antenna was knocked to the floor and who knows what else is askew...I've been too tired to find out.
But the storm and the quake were somehow satisfying. The hail, the wind, the sheer force of it...
I don't know why God doesn't act when He could. But at least I know that it isn't because He lacks the power.
It started on Saturday this time. Robb had to leave for a trade show for the whole weekend, which was abhorrent to both of us. This is the first time he's had to travel over "Vintage family time," but his boss was insistent that he go despite all his protests. And so, after a long Saturday of chores and work, the Vesper service loomed large on my radar. I did not want to go. As the time drew near to get ready, the kids finally got into a good playing groove for the first time all day. And I was mid project. The weather was mild. I hate to stop mid project. No really, I HATE it. But I was resigned to go because I knew how much work my friends had put into getting it ready.
Vintage Vesper services are times of liturgical reading, sitting quietly in the dark with candlelight, with almost a performance art kind of quality. The first time, I was captivated. This time, I expected to settle in and find some reward for attending, but the kids were antsy and bickered with one another over their seats and I was not relaxing at all. As the times of silence drew on, I could feel an inner turmoil rising in my chest, which felt like the beginnings of a panic attack. Internally, I was screaming, "I don't want to be here! I'm here but I am not here. I'm not here, God." Finally, I closed my eyes and told God what I had been thinking all along....that I was angry with Him. I was angry that Robb was on a trip when he should be at home. I was angry that instead of my business doing well so that we can have Robb full time at Vintage, my business was the worst it has ever been. This month has been terrible. I was angry that God just seemed to have forgotten about us....that He seemed completely unconcerned about my prayers all that day to move things, to comfort me, reassure me that we are on the right path, give me some insight, just act like He is listening...
"Hide not our face from your servant; be swift and answer me, for I am in distress." flashed across the screen.
Being honest with God is ugly business. But he already knows, so why not have the satisfaction of saying it. So I said it. When I opened my eyes, the words that danced from the projector said this "My grief is this: That the right hand of the Most High has lost is power."
That. That, God. What the Psalmist said. That's it.
I went home, knowing that He heard me at least. That my request had been received at central processing and I would be notified of further changes when the bureaucracy of Heaven had reviewed my hopes and dreams.
Oh hey, don't get me wrong. Don't think I don't know that my hopes and dreams are subject to the approval of God's will. But what is so bad about my wanting my husband at home?
So, scurry, feed the kids dinner.... Junk, again. *Sigh.* My own pants are too tight. The scale is registering higher than it ever has before. Another battle that must be faced. Baths and bedtime. Hugs and kisses. We miss Daddy.
Sunday morning is all wrong without him. A well-oiled machine, minus the one main cog, barely functions. Once at church, I feel strangely ok. I hear that we have to fight. Sometimes with one another and sometimes with God himself. Because in the fighting, you gain an intimacy that you never would without the fight. That a tested relationship is better than an untested one. I am thinking about the changes that have to made at the Gallery and how I am leading the meeting on Wednesday and how some are opposed to the changes and one even sent me a nasty email about it. The conflict ahead is on my mind. Someone asks me, "Is that really the best venue for you? Is there someplace else that would be a better fit? " And I am struck by the realization that many of my experiences as a pastor's wife all these years actually matter in this case. My past experience is actually useful for something more than painfully amusing anecdotes with other people in ministry jobs. I have no guarantee of success but I have the best shot of anyone at this point.
Sunday afternoon should be sabbath rest time. I try. But my mind is too busy and I sneak work on my computer while I should be napping, reading something pleasant, trusting God with my concerns enough to stop poking at the smoldering piles that I wish would just ignite already.
I emerge to feed the kids dinner more distracted and irritated than ever. The girls want to watch the Oscars and Vin wants to watch a movie. We eat more junk food. I loathe myself. My soul feels scratchy.
I try to settle in and get lost in the fluffy entertainment. The dog starts to bark and growl and I turn to see a face pressed against the glass of my front door. It is my neighbor. Non verbal, autistic, young, but big and uncannily strong for his age. He shouldn't be out alone. He fumbles with the door knob and I guiltily lock the door. "I will call your Mom." I say loudly, but trying to be reassuring. The equal forces of compassion and concern for this boy, adrenaline from being startled and guilt for being afraid of him throbbed in my ears and left my hands shaky as I rifled the drawers looking for my neighbor's phone number. He left. I felt more guilt and fear for letting him leave. I finally found the number and called.
He's home safe. She saw the door open and called for him and he came right home. Did I sound like the ignorant fearful to her? I worried. I am compassionate for my neighbor but I also remember Robb's first job with mentally handicapped adults, some with un-human strength. Why do I have to be so weak and pathetic?
Unnerved, I sent the kids to bed. Tried to get interested in something. Went to bed myself, with a re-run of an old tv show to drone out my own thoughts. In the dark, with just the screen's light, I tried to relax. The wind was picking up. Suddenly, I felt the bed move, as if one of the children had pushed against it. "Who's there?" I sat up, startled. No answer. Turned on the light. The storm began to howl outside and so I checked the weather website. Tornadoes possible. Relaxing was off the table. It was time to stand guard again. "Alone again." I was remembering being alone during the big ice storm a few years ago. How I wrestled with God then, too. We had a veritable death match that time while Robb was stuck in Georgia with a suitcase full of much needed firewood to bring home... if he could get home. Ice storms, snow storms, and now a tornado, God? I got back in bed assuming that if my Netflix network connection was lost, I would know to go get the kids from upstairs. The storm got louder and one by one, the children appeared at my bedside. It was muggy with the four of us scrunched together, but at least we were together.
In the morning, I learned that odd thump against my bed was an earthquake. The tv antenna was knocked to the floor and who knows what else is askew...I've been too tired to find out.
But the storm and the quake were somehow satisfying. The hail, the wind, the sheer force of it...
"....You are the God who works wonders
and have declared your power among the peoples...
The clouds poured out water
the skies thundered; your arrows flashed to and fro;
The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
your lightenings lit up the world;
the earth trembled and shook..."
Psalm 77
I don't know why God doesn't act when He could. But at least I know that it isn't because He lacks the power.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Living the Artist Life
So a very sweet and funny friend asked me the other day, "What do you do exactly? I know you are really busy, but what do you do?"
I thought that might be a fun thing to write about here.
We start our day with family "prayers" on our bed. Last year, we used Shane Claiborne's Book of Common Prayer for Ordinary Radicals. This year, we read a Proverb a day, pray for needs that we are thinking of at that time and recite the Lord's Prayer together. We found that having the kids pile into bed with us played to our strengths and weaknesses...namely Vin is strong at being a morning person and the rest of us are weak at getting up in the morning.
Having Robb working at home now is wonderful because we eat breakfast together. Not the sit down feasts of my childhood, but at least it's usually something warm and we are together.
Three days a week, we try to go to the gym together. The gym is across the street from Mattie's school, so we drop the kids off and head there. That is really working for me. Since I don't really kick into gear mentally until much later in the morning, it gives me a chance to use the time without any mental resistance to being there.
Back from the gym, it helps to shower, get dressed (no pajamas!) and go work in the office across the table from Robb. I catch up on email, check up on people on Facebook, think about blogging, write lists, organize, and pack orders for shipping. I launch listings on Etsy at hourly intervals. Sometimes I am efficient and finish this kind of work quickly. Sometimes I don't. But I don't feel guilty for spending time on Facebook and Twitter for a couple of reasons: 1. I don't really have co-workers, so a little socializing isn't a bad thing. 2. Facebook is a great way to keep a light tab on family and church folks. I don't always respond, but I like to have a sense of what kind of week people are having, needs that they have and ways they might need some encouragement.
I also absorb as much sunlight as I can from the front window to help boost Vitamin D and seratonin...while I consume a great deal of coffee. This window of time from about 8:45 to 11 is the most productive time of my days and I am a little bit protective of it. Without this time, I end up wasting a lot of time the rest of the day because I'm not really grounded or mentally prepared to handle whatever comes up.
One day a week, I meet with a friend for coffee. Usually that is a day that I go from that coffee meeting to thrift stores and the flea markets to re-fill and rearrange them. I completely lack the ability to just go out for one thing. If I am going out, I try to do everything I can do while I am out. Sometimes I go out twice in a week. The flea markets do better when you clean them up after busy weekends and re-stock them just before the weekend starts. I don't always have time for two days out, but the flea markets are pretty flexible. You get out of them what you put in.
One week of the month, I focus on getting things cleaned up, photographed, and listed on Etsy. It takes a whole day to get pictures done and another day or two to get the listings prepared. That means at least one day of the month, I am sitting at the computer for a solid 12 hours or so cranking out more than 30 listings. That just works better for me and keeps the mess of having a lot of stuff out more limited.
One week of the month, I am trying to focus on making things. Sometimes that is mosaics, but sometimes, it is fixing up things for the flea market. Nothing makes me happier than a sunny day out in the garage tinkering like an old man, re-wiring lamps, spray painting, and otherwise puttering.
Two days a month, I work at Heartwood Gallery from 11 to 2:30 in the afternoon. I split a one day gig into two half days, which is much better for our family since otherwise I would be out until after 6 p.m. While I am there, I am very focused on making sure the displays are seasonally appropriate and nicely arranged.
At least one day of the month, I sit and look around and think, "I've got to stop buying vintage stuff and be a normal person. I've got to stop buying stuff that needs to be fixed up. I don't have time for this! People must think I'm crazy. This isn't creativity! It's mental illness! Why can't I get a real job like regular people and do the same thing every day." Sometimes, I do that twice in a month. Sometimes more. This is usually the same time that Robb asks for a haircut.
I do laundry one day a week. I wash it, but Robb usually folds it and makes sure it gets put away. The family works together to keep the house picked up throughout the week and on Saturdays, we try to get the whole house clean for Sunday, so our Sabbath is restful. I grocery shop big-time once a month and make quick stops the rest of the month. This isn't terribly efficient, but with a beef in the freezer and some frozen stuff put away during garden season, it works. Robb is great at picking up and being consistent. I am better at tackling occasional projects like cleaning out the fridge, cleaning the oven and scrubbing the shower.
Afternoons? I have no idea what happens to afternoons. They are just gone. Especially at 3:30 p.m. when the kids get home. I really should just give up then and start making supper, but instead, after the kids have their snack, tell us about their day, and finish their homework, I get all productive, putting off cooking and usually get something amazing done then like cleaning, gardening, or tackling a major project. I will say this...there are things I will never do in a million years on a weekday afternoon: read a book, watch a movie, or take a nap. There is always something that needs to be handled and I don't let myself relax until after supper and any other duties are finished.
I try to make evening a relaxing time, with most of the hard things done for the day. We usually watch some tv with the kids and do quiet, family stuff together before they go to bed. By that time, I usually have a clear picture in my head of what the next day looks like and how I plan to spend it. My days are flexible, but I'm not. I am protective of the beginning of the days and the beginning of weeks. Afternoons and Fridays are probably shot anyway, so that's the best time to hit me up with requests.
So that is a little snapshot of what my days look like. Like a big game of whack-a-mole, basically. I'm curious...how do other people spend their days?
I thought that might be a fun thing to write about here.
We start our day with family "prayers" on our bed. Last year, we used Shane Claiborne's Book of Common Prayer for Ordinary Radicals. This year, we read a Proverb a day, pray for needs that we are thinking of at that time and recite the Lord's Prayer together. We found that having the kids pile into bed with us played to our strengths and weaknesses...namely Vin is strong at being a morning person and the rest of us are weak at getting up in the morning.
Having Robb working at home now is wonderful because we eat breakfast together. Not the sit down feasts of my childhood, but at least it's usually something warm and we are together.
Three days a week, we try to go to the gym together. The gym is across the street from Mattie's school, so we drop the kids off and head there. That is really working for me. Since I don't really kick into gear mentally until much later in the morning, it gives me a chance to use the time without any mental resistance to being there.
Back from the gym, it helps to shower, get dressed (no pajamas!) and go work in the office across the table from Robb. I catch up on email, check up on people on Facebook, think about blogging, write lists, organize, and pack orders for shipping. I launch listings on Etsy at hourly intervals. Sometimes I am efficient and finish this kind of work quickly. Sometimes I don't. But I don't feel guilty for spending time on Facebook and Twitter for a couple of reasons: 1. I don't really have co-workers, so a little socializing isn't a bad thing. 2. Facebook is a great way to keep a light tab on family and church folks. I don't always respond, but I like to have a sense of what kind of week people are having, needs that they have and ways they might need some encouragement.
I also absorb as much sunlight as I can from the front window to help boost Vitamin D and seratonin...while I consume a great deal of coffee. This window of time from about 8:45 to 11 is the most productive time of my days and I am a little bit protective of it. Without this time, I end up wasting a lot of time the rest of the day because I'm not really grounded or mentally prepared to handle whatever comes up.
One day a week, I meet with a friend for coffee. Usually that is a day that I go from that coffee meeting to thrift stores and the flea markets to re-fill and rearrange them. I completely lack the ability to just go out for one thing. If I am going out, I try to do everything I can do while I am out. Sometimes I go out twice in a week. The flea markets do better when you clean them up after busy weekends and re-stock them just before the weekend starts. I don't always have time for two days out, but the flea markets are pretty flexible. You get out of them what you put in.
One week of the month, I focus on getting things cleaned up, photographed, and listed on Etsy. It takes a whole day to get pictures done and another day or two to get the listings prepared. That means at least one day of the month, I am sitting at the computer for a solid 12 hours or so cranking out more than 30 listings. That just works better for me and keeps the mess of having a lot of stuff out more limited.
One week of the month, I am trying to focus on making things. Sometimes that is mosaics, but sometimes, it is fixing up things for the flea market. Nothing makes me happier than a sunny day out in the garage tinkering like an old man, re-wiring lamps, spray painting, and otherwise puttering.
Two days a month, I work at Heartwood Gallery from 11 to 2:30 in the afternoon. I split a one day gig into two half days, which is much better for our family since otherwise I would be out until after 6 p.m. While I am there, I am very focused on making sure the displays are seasonally appropriate and nicely arranged.
At least one day of the month, I sit and look around and think, "I've got to stop buying vintage stuff and be a normal person. I've got to stop buying stuff that needs to be fixed up. I don't have time for this! People must think I'm crazy. This isn't creativity! It's mental illness! Why can't I get a real job like regular people and do the same thing every day." Sometimes, I do that twice in a month. Sometimes more. This is usually the same time that Robb asks for a haircut.
I do laundry one day a week. I wash it, but Robb usually folds it and makes sure it gets put away. The family works together to keep the house picked up throughout the week and on Saturdays, we try to get the whole house clean for Sunday, so our Sabbath is restful. I grocery shop big-time once a month and make quick stops the rest of the month. This isn't terribly efficient, but with a beef in the freezer and some frozen stuff put away during garden season, it works. Robb is great at picking up and being consistent. I am better at tackling occasional projects like cleaning out the fridge, cleaning the oven and scrubbing the shower.
Afternoons? I have no idea what happens to afternoons. They are just gone. Especially at 3:30 p.m. when the kids get home. I really should just give up then and start making supper, but instead, after the kids have their snack, tell us about their day, and finish their homework, I get all productive, putting off cooking and usually get something amazing done then like cleaning, gardening, or tackling a major project. I will say this...there are things I will never do in a million years on a weekday afternoon: read a book, watch a movie, or take a nap. There is always something that needs to be handled and I don't let myself relax until after supper and any other duties are finished.
I try to make evening a relaxing time, with most of the hard things done for the day. We usually watch some tv with the kids and do quiet, family stuff together before they go to bed. By that time, I usually have a clear picture in my head of what the next day looks like and how I plan to spend it. My days are flexible, but I'm not. I am protective of the beginning of the days and the beginning of weeks. Afternoons and Fridays are probably shot anyway, so that's the best time to hit me up with requests.
So that is a little snapshot of what my days look like. Like a big game of whack-a-mole, basically. I'm curious...how do other people spend their days?
Thursday, January 03, 2013
2013 - The Year of the Whisper
A couple of months ago, Robb asked for some of the women at our church to speak for a few weeks. I felt really compelled to volunteer, which was crazy because I was pretty busy at the time. Not only did I feel compelled, I had a topic and a passage of the Bible in mind. The Saturday before I was to preach found me writing away at a sermon from the story of Elijah. But as the day dragged on, I was having trouble landing the plane. I could plainly see how my own story and Elijah's story had some similarities. I could deeply relate to this ancient prophet. But I didn't know what the point of the story was. It is a daunting thing to stand before a group of people and talk, but it gets nightmarish if you don't have a point.
Late in the afternoon, while reading the passage aloud while Robb took the kids to run errands, it finally came together. I had a moment that changed the way I think. And when you change the way you think, you change the way you live. This year, I will be living much differently than I did last year. For one, I'm blogging again. I make no promises about how often, but I am reclaiming how much I enjoy writing and working things out here, not to mention keeping track of what our family is doing and how we are growing and changing.
So here is my sermon, adapted a bit for you.
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The next day (or shortly thereafter) after his massive triumph, Elijah gets word that a furious Queen Jezebel is going to kill him. Elijah is terrified and takes off on a 200 mile journey to Mt. Sinai, only stopping along the way to ask God to kill him because he is completely overwhelmed and discouraged. Instead, God feeds him via an Angel-chef and gets him to the mountain where they have a little chat. God asks Elijah why he is there and Elijah answers succinctly. In response, God puts on a little demonstration: first a great wind, possible a tornado. But He is not in the wind. Then a fire. But He's not in the fire. Then an earthquake, but God isn't in the earthquake. Finally, God whispers. And God is in the whisper. He asks again why Elijah is there and Elijah repeats the same words he used before. God tells him to go annoint another prophet to work with him and reminds him that there are thousands of other prophets like him that are being faithful to God and that Eljah is not alone.
MY STORY:
When I was a little kid, I heard this story in church. I think that as a kid I liked the part where Elijah calls down the fire and shows everyone that God is really God. I liked how big it was and how effective it was and how God just SHOWED them that he was boss. I liked the part where Elijah outruns the chariot and how he is like a superhero.
Now that I’m an adult, I think I resonate a lot more with the “Please just kill me” part.
Several months ago, I had a really unusual experience. I was standing in the back at the computer, running the slides. It was the Sunday after Labor Day and Robb mentioned in passing that it was Vintage’s 7th birthday. I think there was some clapping or some small acknowledgment and the service just went on as usual, but I mentally sort of checked out. I don’t know if other people are like this, but I struggle to be "in the moment." I think it’s because I am taking in a lot of details all the time and there is usually some kind of delay between my taking in those details and my organizing those details into some kind of usable information. I think that is why I like history a lot, because there is a lot of time to organize the details and interpret them in a way that makes sense.
In this case, it took me several hours to organize what happened in my mind at that moment. The service was over and we had had lunch and were at home, getting ready to Sabbath ( which is a fancy Sunday word for nap!) when I started to cry. Robb was holding me and I was trying to explain that I wasn’t excited about the fact that Vintage was seven years old. But the only words I could come up with were “We still can’t get people to work in the nursery.” Which doesn’t make a lot of sense to you all, probably because we have Hannah and she does an amazing job of running the nursery. But back when Vintage started, on our very first Sunday, we had NOBODY to run the nursery. We had contacted college ministries on campus and people who went to Fellowship Bible Church’s Saturday night service and put out emails begging all 10 of the people we knew in NWA to work in the nursery.
And then on the Friday night before our first service, we got invited to dinner at some people's house. They had seen our signs advertising the church and he checked out the website and invited us to dinner…pretty much without asking her. So she was all prickly and stand-offish at the beginning of the night and then miraculously, at the end of the evening, they agreed to help out in the nursery for just that week and never again….which was pretty much a miracle in our minds. (And we became really good friends to this day.)
Fast forward to that Sunday morning 7 years later, I think we had to scramble a bit because someone needed to switch or some small thing. A church nursery is just one of those things that can make such a huge difference if it isn’t working well. New people won’t come back if there is no nursery, the whole thing can take a church out of commission. It has to be perfect. Like a professional day care. Or so people say. I don't really believe that but who knows what other people think? What if this whole church plant FAILS because we don't have a Disney Land nursery?!
So I’m crying and trying to express how really vulnerable I feel. And Robb is nodding and saying “Yeah, I feel that way too.” And then I feel more afraid. Because if he is feeling vulnerable and afraid about how Vintage is doing, then I get really freaked out.
And then the worst part happened. I started to have this feeling of wanting to escape. To get out. To get away from Vintage. To not have to do it anymore. Just get regular jobs and do whatever we want on Sunday mornings. To not worry about how things are going in a church...just show up and smile and sing and eat their free bread and grape juice. To be free of the burden of caring about people. Which was terrifying. Because I’m the kind of person that once I start thinking about something, I’m probably going to do it. So much so that all I have to do is say to Robb, “I’m thinking about painting the kitchen….” And he will just groan and roll his eyes. Because once the idea is in my head, I can’t let it go.
So some of you are thinking “You got all this from the nursery?” What’s the big deal? People will sign up. It will be taken care of. To which I have to explain that it’s not just the nursery. It’s our life. For 16 years, we have been in this life. This strange life of ministry.
BACK TO ELIJAH'S STORY
So all that to say, I am feeling with Elijah. I am feeling this intense loneliness that he expresses over and over again. I know what he is saying when he says, “I’m no better than my fathers, kill me now.” I was overwhelmed with fear that I was going to burn out. And I don’t know what to do about it. Because if I tell people at Vintage, I might scare them. And if I don’t tell anyone, I’m just going to be fantasizing about getting out of here. I am afraid and Elijah is afraid. I am exhausted and Elijah is exhausted. But I don’t know what to do about it. Elijah runs away and I feel myself running away too.
I love the tenderness of God in the story. Elijah falls asleep and the Angel of the Lord cooks him a meal, wakes him up and feeds him. And then he just goes to sleep again. Can you even imagine how nice it would be just to go to sleep and have an angel bring you a hot meal and then tuck you in again?
And then Elijah travels to Mt. Horeb, which is pretty much the same place as Mt. Sinai. They don’t really know where it is now, but back then, it was a known place and Elijah went there and it took him 40 days and nights to travel there. I think he went there looking for some answers. So God asks him why he is there and he rattles off what is bothering him:
He has wrapped his whole life around serving God. He feels alone. He feels ineffective.
I’ve wrapped my whole life around serving you, God. I feel alone. I feel ineffective.
So God tells him to stand out there and see all the big things…the wind, the earthquake, the fire and then the small voice. But God is only in the whisper. And the whisper asks Elijah why he is there. And what does he say? He says the exact same thing. He still feels the same way.
I have puzzled over this exchange for weeks now. I always heard that the point of the story was that God was in the whisper. But if Elijah still felt the same way as he did before, why was it so important? I think the answer is back at the beginning of the story when Elijah is fixing to call down the fire. Lets look again at verse 26:
Maybe he is showing Elijah through the wind, earthquake and fire that God is very strong, effective and powerful. That He is big enough and worthy enough to wrap our lives around. But at our core, where we feel alone, He is more than just a big powerful force, He is a voice to talk to. He is in a relationship with us. He cares about our eating and sleeping and feeling. This voice goes on to tell Elijah to go on. Go anoint a king who will wipe out Ahab and Jezebel. Go anoint Elisha, who will be his friend, assistant, companion. And oh, by the way, there are thousands of people who are in this with you Elijah. "There are thousands of people who are following Me too, Elijah. You aren't alone." He addresses Elijah’s fears and frustrations. He provides support. He relates.
I really, really, REALLY find myself in this story.
ME AGAIN
1. Elijah has a major breakdown when his expectations aren’t met. I suspect he thought that everything would be totally different after Mt. Carmel. Instead of everything being on track, he gets a death threat. I don’t know where I get my unrealistic expectations sometimes, but I know that when we started Vintage, there was this lofty idea that since Vintage was going to be a totally different kind of church, I would be a totally different pastors wife. I know I was scared when Vintage was getting started. So I took that "different kind of pastor's wife" thing to mean that I would not get hurt any more. But instead, I got hurt WORSE. In the last seven years, I have had my heart broken because of Vintage. I have lost people I cared about. Some people I trusted turned their backs on us. Relationships that mattered deeply to me have grown thin and evaporated. People have said and believed terrible things about the sweet husband I love and trust. And in tiny ways, people weren't there for me in ways I thought that they would be. The tiny things pile up. The big losses seared my soul. I didn't want to love or trust anyone anymore. Nothing felt safe.
2. Elijah was exhausted and lonely because he could only see what he was doing. He cognitively knew that Obadiah was working on his side and those other 100 prophets, but emotionally, he was so alone. In my moment of freaking out, I forgot or failed to see that there are so many of you that are faithful and serving. When I really paid attention to the ways that other people were being even more faithful than me, I didn’t feel nearly as alone. In fact, just spending a little bit of time being grateful for people and saying thank you really helped. The other thing I needed to do was to ask for help. When I did that, I got the support I needed.
3. Elijah needed a forty-day journey. That’s a common amount of time for various people in the Bible to experience a shift in their thinking and that’s why our Experimental Collectives are about that long. In my case, I was in the creativity collective at this time. My initial project shows me like Elijah, like a superhero, calling down the fire, making things happen. There is a part of me that really wants to be that super-hero, but then I’m crushed by how ineffective I am. I want to be the kind of pastor’s wife who wants to teach the kids and clean the church and be very administrative. I feel like I should be whatever is needed, whether I want to do it or not. Whether I have the skills or personality for it or not. If it needs to be done, I should do it. Because that’s being a leader, right? That’s the way to show I care about God and about you. Better to burn out than rust out, right?
It was a really big moment for me the night I did a self-portrait. I’d never done a self-portrait before. I’ve never had an art class. Never painted with anything other than little craft paints. There was something really freeing about just going ahead and painting. And that’s when it occurred to me that it would be a lot more interesting if God was to speak through me through my art. It’s not as obvious and effective as fire, earthquake, or being good at planning events, but maybe it’s the whisper, the still small voice that is needed. It seems like he is not worried about being effective as much as he is with being in relationship with us.
It took me all this time to figure out what my melt-down meant and why it happened. I took this story to help me understand how I had such crazy expectations. It took this story to really grasp the idea that God is fully capable of working through the big, obvious stuff, but he is also fully God in the whisper. And if He is ok with that kind of limitation, I can be too.
Vintage, go in peace....
-----------
So, 2013 is the year for me to whisper. For so long, I have been afraid to do things because they wouldn't be good enough, wouldn't be effective enough, wouldn't make a big enough dent. I was afraid to enter relationships because they might end badly. I was afraid to just be myself because maybe that wouldn't be important enough. I was afraid to say no and I was afraid to say yes. I was afraid to do anything good for the world because it wouldn't be enough. This year, I'm ok with whispering. I'm ok with being small and unremarkable. I'm ok with not being a big show. I'm ok with people taking me or leaving me (I might not actually be okay with that, but I'm working on it.)
I still think it is kind of crazy that God would make me this way instead of creating me with a passion to plan events, co-ordinate ministries, manage people effectively, teach the young and the old, host people in my home at a moment's notice, sing like Adele, play an instrument with any skill, or just generally get my ya-yas from doing any job that nobody likes to do at church. Instead, he strapped me with a reclusive, overly-analytical, introverted nature that is most often set free to worship when I am out in nature or covered in the dirt that only comes from "making stuff." I need things to be pretty. What good is that?
Apparently, it's good enough.
Late in the afternoon, while reading the passage aloud while Robb took the kids to run errands, it finally came together. I had a moment that changed the way I think. And when you change the way you think, you change the way you live. This year, I will be living much differently than I did last year. For one, I'm blogging again. I make no promises about how often, but I am reclaiming how much I enjoy writing and working things out here, not to mention keeping track of what our family is doing and how we are growing and changing.
So here is my sermon, adapted a bit for you.
-->
ELIJAH’s STORY:
1Kings 18 – 19.
In brief, Elijah is a prophet during the reign of a bad king and queen, Ahab and Jezebel, in the middle history of the nation of Israel, long after David and long before Jesus. He has pronounced a drought in the land that has lasted for 3 years and Ahab and Jezebel have been championing the worship of a different god, Baal. Elijah has been in hiding but he comes to Ahab and proposes a challenge on top of a sacred mountain. They have a duel of sorts to prove which god is the real God. So 450 prophets of Baal try to get him to call down fire and burn up their offering on their alter and Elijah does the same thing with God. After hours of the prophets of Baal dancing around and cutting themselves to get their god's attention, nothing happens and Elijah makes fun of them. Then he steps up and says it is his turn. God promptly shoots fire down from heaven in a no contest TKO of Baal. Eljah kills the 450 prophets of Baal, demands that the people worship the true God, beats the king down the side of the mountain in a race wherein the king is in a chariot and Eljah is on foot, and finally, it begins to rain for the first time in 3 years...a gully-washing deluge.The next day (or shortly thereafter) after his massive triumph, Elijah gets word that a furious Queen Jezebel is going to kill him. Elijah is terrified and takes off on a 200 mile journey to Mt. Sinai, only stopping along the way to ask God to kill him because he is completely overwhelmed and discouraged. Instead, God feeds him via an Angel-chef and gets him to the mountain where they have a little chat. God asks Elijah why he is there and Elijah answers succinctly. In response, God puts on a little demonstration: first a great wind, possible a tornado. But He is not in the wind. Then a fire. But He's not in the fire. Then an earthquake, but God isn't in the earthquake. Finally, God whispers. And God is in the whisper. He asks again why Elijah is there and Elijah repeats the same words he used before. God tells him to go annoint another prophet to work with him and reminds him that there are thousands of other prophets like him that are being faithful to God and that Eljah is not alone.
MY STORY:
When I was a little kid, I heard this story in church. I think that as a kid I liked the part where Elijah calls down the fire and shows everyone that God is really God. I liked how big it was and how effective it was and how God just SHOWED them that he was boss. I liked the part where Elijah outruns the chariot and how he is like a superhero.
Now that I’m an adult, I think I resonate a lot more with the “Please just kill me” part.
Several months ago, I had a really unusual experience. I was standing in the back at the computer, running the slides. It was the Sunday after Labor Day and Robb mentioned in passing that it was Vintage’s 7th birthday. I think there was some clapping or some small acknowledgment and the service just went on as usual, but I mentally sort of checked out. I don’t know if other people are like this, but I struggle to be "in the moment." I think it’s because I am taking in a lot of details all the time and there is usually some kind of delay between my taking in those details and my organizing those details into some kind of usable information. I think that is why I like history a lot, because there is a lot of time to organize the details and interpret them in a way that makes sense.
In this case, it took me several hours to organize what happened in my mind at that moment. The service was over and we had had lunch and were at home, getting ready to Sabbath ( which is a fancy Sunday word for nap!) when I started to cry. Robb was holding me and I was trying to explain that I wasn’t excited about the fact that Vintage was seven years old. But the only words I could come up with were “We still can’t get people to work in the nursery.” Which doesn’t make a lot of sense to you all, probably because we have Hannah and she does an amazing job of running the nursery. But back when Vintage started, on our very first Sunday, we had NOBODY to run the nursery. We had contacted college ministries on campus and people who went to Fellowship Bible Church’s Saturday night service and put out emails begging all 10 of the people we knew in NWA to work in the nursery.
And then on the Friday night before our first service, we got invited to dinner at some people's house. They had seen our signs advertising the church and he checked out the website and invited us to dinner…pretty much without asking her. So she was all prickly and stand-offish at the beginning of the night and then miraculously, at the end of the evening, they agreed to help out in the nursery for just that week and never again….which was pretty much a miracle in our minds. (And we became really good friends to this day.)
Fast forward to that Sunday morning 7 years later, I think we had to scramble a bit because someone needed to switch or some small thing. A church nursery is just one of those things that can make such a huge difference if it isn’t working well. New people won’t come back if there is no nursery, the whole thing can take a church out of commission. It has to be perfect. Like a professional day care. Or so people say. I don't really believe that but who knows what other people think? What if this whole church plant FAILS because we don't have a Disney Land nursery?!
So I’m crying and trying to express how really vulnerable I feel. And Robb is nodding and saying “Yeah, I feel that way too.” And then I feel more afraid. Because if he is feeling vulnerable and afraid about how Vintage is doing, then I get really freaked out.
And then the worst part happened. I started to have this feeling of wanting to escape. To get out. To get away from Vintage. To not have to do it anymore. Just get regular jobs and do whatever we want on Sunday mornings. To not worry about how things are going in a church...just show up and smile and sing and eat their free bread and grape juice. To be free of the burden of caring about people. Which was terrifying. Because I’m the kind of person that once I start thinking about something, I’m probably going to do it. So much so that all I have to do is say to Robb, “I’m thinking about painting the kitchen….” And he will just groan and roll his eyes. Because once the idea is in my head, I can’t let it go.
So some of you are thinking “You got all this from the nursery?” What’s the big deal? People will sign up. It will be taken care of. To which I have to explain that it’s not just the nursery. It’s our life. For 16 years, we have been in this life. This strange life of ministry.
BACK TO ELIJAH'S STORY
So all that to say, I am feeling with Elijah. I am feeling this intense loneliness that he expresses over and over again. I know what he is saying when he says, “I’m no better than my fathers, kill me now.” I was overwhelmed with fear that I was going to burn out. And I don’t know what to do about it. Because if I tell people at Vintage, I might scare them. And if I don’t tell anyone, I’m just going to be fantasizing about getting out of here. I am afraid and Elijah is afraid. I am exhausted and Elijah is exhausted. But I don’t know what to do about it. Elijah runs away and I feel myself running away too.
I love the tenderness of God in the story. Elijah falls asleep and the Angel of the Lord cooks him a meal, wakes him up and feeds him. And then he just goes to sleep again. Can you even imagine how nice it would be just to go to sleep and have an angel bring you a hot meal and then tuck you in again?
And then Elijah travels to Mt. Horeb, which is pretty much the same place as Mt. Sinai. They don’t really know where it is now, but back then, it was a known place and Elijah went there and it took him 40 days and nights to travel there. I think he went there looking for some answers. So God asks him why he is there and he rattles off what is bothering him:
“I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the sons of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars and killed Your prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.”
He has wrapped his whole life around serving God. He feels alone. He feels ineffective.
I’ve wrapped my whole life around serving you, God. I feel alone. I feel ineffective.
So God tells him to stand out there and see all the big things…the wind, the earthquake, the fire and then the small voice. But God is only in the whisper. And the whisper asks Elijah why he is there. And what does he say? He says the exact same thing. He still feels the same way.
I have puzzled over this exchange for weeks now. I always heard that the point of the story was that God was in the whisper. But if Elijah still felt the same way as he did before, why was it so important? I think the answer is back at the beginning of the story when Elijah is fixing to call down the fire. Lets look again at verse 26:
Then they took the ox which [k]was given them and they prepared it and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon saying, “O Baal, answer us.” But there was no voice and no one answered.
Maybe he is showing Elijah through the wind, earthquake and fire that God is very strong, effective and powerful. That He is big enough and worthy enough to wrap our lives around. But at our core, where we feel alone, He is more than just a big powerful force, He is a voice to talk to. He is in a relationship with us. He cares about our eating and sleeping and feeling. This voice goes on to tell Elijah to go on. Go anoint a king who will wipe out Ahab and Jezebel. Go anoint Elisha, who will be his friend, assistant, companion. And oh, by the way, there are thousands of people who are in this with you Elijah. "There are thousands of people who are following Me too, Elijah. You aren't alone." He addresses Elijah’s fears and frustrations. He provides support. He relates.
I really, really, REALLY find myself in this story.
ME AGAIN
1. Elijah has a major breakdown when his expectations aren’t met. I suspect he thought that everything would be totally different after Mt. Carmel. Instead of everything being on track, he gets a death threat. I don’t know where I get my unrealistic expectations sometimes, but I know that when we started Vintage, there was this lofty idea that since Vintage was going to be a totally different kind of church, I would be a totally different pastors wife. I know I was scared when Vintage was getting started. So I took that "different kind of pastor's wife" thing to mean that I would not get hurt any more. But instead, I got hurt WORSE. In the last seven years, I have had my heart broken because of Vintage. I have lost people I cared about. Some people I trusted turned their backs on us. Relationships that mattered deeply to me have grown thin and evaporated. People have said and believed terrible things about the sweet husband I love and trust. And in tiny ways, people weren't there for me in ways I thought that they would be. The tiny things pile up. The big losses seared my soul. I didn't want to love or trust anyone anymore. Nothing felt safe.
2. Elijah was exhausted and lonely because he could only see what he was doing. He cognitively knew that Obadiah was working on his side and those other 100 prophets, but emotionally, he was so alone. In my moment of freaking out, I forgot or failed to see that there are so many of you that are faithful and serving. When I really paid attention to the ways that other people were being even more faithful than me, I didn’t feel nearly as alone. In fact, just spending a little bit of time being grateful for people and saying thank you really helped. The other thing I needed to do was to ask for help. When I did that, I got the support I needed.
3. Elijah needed a forty-day journey. That’s a common amount of time for various people in the Bible to experience a shift in their thinking and that’s why our Experimental Collectives are about that long. In my case, I was in the creativity collective at this time. My initial project shows me like Elijah, like a superhero, calling down the fire, making things happen. There is a part of me that really wants to be that super-hero, but then I’m crushed by how ineffective I am. I want to be the kind of pastor’s wife who wants to teach the kids and clean the church and be very administrative. I feel like I should be whatever is needed, whether I want to do it or not. Whether I have the skills or personality for it or not. If it needs to be done, I should do it. Because that’s being a leader, right? That’s the way to show I care about God and about you. Better to burn out than rust out, right?
It was a really big moment for me the night I did a self-portrait. I’d never done a self-portrait before. I’ve never had an art class. Never painted with anything other than little craft paints. There was something really freeing about just going ahead and painting. And that’s when it occurred to me that it would be a lot more interesting if God was to speak through me through my art. It’s not as obvious and effective as fire, earthquake, or being good at planning events, but maybe it’s the whisper, the still small voice that is needed. It seems like he is not worried about being effective as much as he is with being in relationship with us.
It took me all this time to figure out what my melt-down meant and why it happened. I took this story to help me understand how I had such crazy expectations. It took this story to really grasp the idea that God is fully capable of working through the big, obvious stuff, but he is also fully God in the whisper. And if He is ok with that kind of limitation, I can be too.
Vintage, go in peace....
-----------
So, 2013 is the year for me to whisper. For so long, I have been afraid to do things because they wouldn't be good enough, wouldn't be effective enough, wouldn't make a big enough dent. I was afraid to enter relationships because they might end badly. I was afraid to just be myself because maybe that wouldn't be important enough. I was afraid to say no and I was afraid to say yes. I was afraid to do anything good for the world because it wouldn't be enough. This year, I'm ok with whispering. I'm ok with being small and unremarkable. I'm ok with not being a big show. I'm ok with people taking me or leaving me (I might not actually be okay with that, but I'm working on it.)
I still think it is kind of crazy that God would make me this way instead of creating me with a passion to plan events, co-ordinate ministries, manage people effectively, teach the young and the old, host people in my home at a moment's notice, sing like Adele, play an instrument with any skill, or just generally get my ya-yas from doing any job that nobody likes to do at church. Instead, he strapped me with a reclusive, overly-analytical, introverted nature that is most often set free to worship when I am out in nature or covered in the dirt that only comes from "making stuff." I need things to be pretty. What good is that?
Apparently, it's good enough.
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