H: for How Long Will I Spend on This (or Honestly It's Felt Like Decades)

It's been a while.  I have nearly started this so many times over the last 2 1/2 years, but then I didn't know how or I got busier or I forgot or I was scared. 

But writing is in my heart.  It's how I process.  So here I am.

This was meant to be "Month 4: My Peeps" in my journey through Loving My Actual Life.  It started that way back in October 2016, and then I failed miserably.  So I gave myself another month.  And I really did try.

Month 4:
Boy oh boy, do I need this.  Husband and I have both been stressed with work--that makes us both withdraw.  So I have barely spent time with him, Daughters and I are doing a great job arguing, I miss my friends, there is a sweet babe I know who was born sick . . . all I want to do is read, and all I feel obligated to do is work.

So.  People.  The ones I love.  The ones God gave me to do life beside--to love my life with.

Quantity time.

Quality time.

I planned to schedule time in my calendar to be with specific people, send handwritten notes to people, be present with eye contact and no phone, and watch for moments when God put someone in front of me who needed me in that moment.

Y'all, that's where I got stuck.  Once I started looking for them, they were everywhere.

That month started with a phone call from a dear, dear friend I love with a mix of younger sister and niece and daughter telling me her baby boy had been born . . . and hours later had slipped into respiratory distress as a result of a brain bleed.  They were states away, and I fell to my knees.  I spent days staring at my computer monitor watching him in the hospital and praying, pleading, willing him to take one more breath.  Wondering if I should get in my car and drive to them.  Wondering if I'd ever get to meet him. 

That month was November 2016.

Day Nine: Today we sat the girls down to tell them about the election.  We also discussed our family rules and how that means we connect with people.  We look for people on the buddy bench, and we engage with them.  Because we're human.  Because love trumps hate.  I've always known that, but in the faces of my girls I see it.

Day Eleven: I am grieving.  This connecting means actually seeing where people are--actually seeing them.  And sometimes it means grieving.  So I am.

Day Sixteen: It's never-ending, the talking and the thinking.  And apparently the crying.  It's not lost on me that in this month of connecting I am finding myself withdrawing.  This election has truly built a wall . . . It's not lost on me how I am connecting with humanity as a larger part, even while pulling away from people around me.  It's a pity it takes this for us to see how much we need each other and be grateful we have each other.  I am praying that as this month progresses I continue to see and pursue those connections.  Also that I remember the hope and connections President Obama encouraged in his State of the Union: "I believe in change, because I believe in you."
May that be true today.  May I believe in change and in goodness and in love because I believe in myself and my sisters and my kids and my husband and strangers on the train.

Day (thirty)One: I think I need a redo.  None of my intentionality happened this month.  So December will be my peeps...again.  Today I spent largely by myself, with one major exception.  I drove to Kalamazoo in the sleet to place a Cubs pennant by Uncle Johnny's grave.  He would have been so happy they won.  And that made me think.  Part of being present--and loving my actual life--means truly knowing the people around me.  What is their thing?  What is the part of them that will seem important enough to their being that would make it worth standing in a cemetery an hour away from home forcing a baseball pennant into the semi-frozen ground at the base of a 30-year-old headstone in 30-degree sleet?  I want to know that about my people.

And so.  For the past 29 months I have been living a redo.  I've been failing and succeeding and then failing again at putting my phone down and being fully present.  I've written exactly one handwritten note and approximately one zillion text messages.  I've created hashtags and adopted colored hearts and started watching the Bachelor and eaten way too much ice cream and shared too many bottles of wine. 

Along the way a college friend's mom was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, and she died.  Another friend-like-a-father has seen the levels of cancer in his body dwindle and come back with a vengeance, even while his sister died from a years-long battle with cancer and his wife was diagnosed.  A friend from elementary school has courageously fought breast cancer--finally getting to ring the bell at the end of treatments and in remission--while also going through a divorce.  That baby boy nephew/grandson/friend turned two and is running and playing golf and hockey and making us all laugh with his sweetness, perfectly and miraculously healthy. 

I've walked part of these last 29 months with a friend through an eating disorder that left her in residential treatment and continues to call her name, another friend through realized childhood trauma that has eaten away too much of her adult life and threatened to steal her spirit, and the coming out and settling in to who God made them to be of friends and family.  I have been a confidant and a cheerleader and a late-night text and a hug.  I have grieved.  Oh, have I grieved.

I have watched my daughters navigate the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school.  They have said goodbye to friends and welcomed new ones.  As a country we have endured too many school shootings to remember all their names, and as a mother I have sent my daughter to school because school officials and the school police officer insisted our kids were safe despite a threat of violence. And then I did it again.  And I stood on the sidewalk surrounded by middle schoolers at a March for Their Lives rally my 7th grader helped organize. 

My heart has wandered away from church as I've watched and listened to too much hate spewed in the name of a God who commanded us to love.  And then, in the end, I've wandered back in . . . because people.

I stood on a corner in beautiful Charleston, SC, in disbelief as my husband told me--through the phone and my protestations that I had just sung a song with him the day before--that a vibrant man, the backbone of hospitality in our church, had died that day at work.  I have been to funerals, I have been to support groups, I have intervened in harassment of a sleeping homeless man on a train, I have mothered a drunken college student on a train platform, I have stopped a drunken hair-pulling fight between strangers at a concert, I have born witness to countless stories of trauma and mental illness, I have fought with words and actions for marginalized people, I have marched...and I have loved.  I have loved.

And I have failed miserably at loving. 

I have allowed myself to love those I deemed worthy of my love.

And the others I have judged with a harshness and a disdain and even a disgust.

And, oh, God, I have so much to learn. 

So how long will I spend on month four?  It's become Groundhog Day or Before I Fall for me, a month I'm destined to repeat until I figure out how to get it right.  In truth, these 29 months have been the longest decades of my life.  They have been heartbreaking and challenging and beautiful and life changing.

These 29 months I've spent weaving in and out of intentionality around loving the people in my actual life--in person, via text, over social media--ended in two remarkable and contrasting ways.  Both with death, and, in a way, both with life.

Easter.  It's the dawn after the darkness.  It's the promise that the grave doesn't win and that sin doesn't win and that somehow, some way, what has been turned upside down will be made right again.

And then, days later, Rachel Held Evans died.  How many lives have I pleaded for in these 29 months?  How much healing have I banged on the Throne of Grace for in these 29 months?  Rachel's is included.  My wandering back into church--and the staying power, if I'm honest--began with the words of Rachel.  Like so many others, I am in church #becauseofRHE.  In the hours and days after Rachel's death, I came across this Tweet from @jamieleefinch:

"#BecauseofRHE tweets today I'm struck with the awareness that the greatest thing Rachel may have given all of us was each other."

I replied with this: "#BecauseofRHE I know I am not alone...in my doubts, in my convictions, in my hopes, in my longings.  She gave me Church."

But she gave me more than that.  As I've read so much of what's been written about her, now that we won't get anything more written by her, I have been struck by the grace with which she treated those who belittled and attacked and hated her.  She saw in everyone one truth: the image of God. 

I haven't seen that.

I've allowed myself to decide that certain people have decided to ignore the image of God in themselves and in others they don't like or are afraid of and have therefore made themselves unworthy of love and grace from me.  As if I'm the one who gets to decide any of that.  I have done the very thing I have accused them of doing.  I may choose to let in those traditionally locked out, but I'm no different if I'm pushing others out the door in order to do it. 

Y'all, I want to be loving.  I want to be safe.  I want to figure out how to embrace even those with whom I disagree.  God, let me see You in them.  All of them.  I want to figure out what is important enough to their being that I would stand in the sleet or stay up half the night or storm the Throne of Grace on their behalf. 

"But the gospel doesn't need a coalition devoted to keeping the wrong people out.  It needs a family of sinners, saved by grace, committed to tearing down the walls, throwing open the doors, and shouting, 'Welcome! There's bread and wine.  Come eat with us and talk.' This isn't a kingdom for the worthy; it's a kingdom for the hungry."    - Rachel Held Evans

At the end of the day, we're all the wrong people.  And we're all the sinners saved by grace.  And we're all welcome, because we're all so, so hungry.

 

 

 

Reviewing: Raising Uncommon Kids

Raising Uncommon Kids – 12 Biblical Traits You Need to Raise Selfless Kids

By Sami Cone

So I started reading Raising Uncommon Kids and then quit reading it at the 13^th paragraph: “If I wanted my daughter to change, I realized, the change had to start with me.”

Wait.  What?  I went back to the cover.  What had I missed?  How was this book meant to change my children from self-absorbed drama queens into beautiful Proverbs 31 women about changing me first?!  “12 Biblical Traits YOU NEED to Raise Selfless Kids.”  I missed the two simple words in all caps.  “YOU NEED.”  (So then I laughed nervously at my oversight, picked myself up off the floor, and took a few cleansing yoga breaths before I started reading again.)

Me.  It’s about me.  My children model so much about who my husband and I are . . . and their “uncommonality” and selflessness is bound to be no different.  Cone introduces and then dissects the 12 Biblical Traits we need to produce in our lives what we hope our children will emulate.  From Love and Harmony to Wisdom and Patience to Humility and Compassion, each chapter provides an explanation, a mirror to hold up and examine ourselves, a mentor moment that will allow us to share these truths with our children, and practical tips to cultivate these traits in our children.  And cultivate is the right word.  While Colossians 3:12-17 can feel like a giant to do list for creating peaceful homes, it is really a guide for what God can do through our homes and families as we submit to His way of thinking, parenting, and living together. 

These blog reviews always mean I have to read a book too fast to fully chew it, embrace it, and measure its change in my life.  As a result, some of them require deeper reading.  This is one of those books.  I hope I can find a group of parents to chew it and embrace it and measure its change in our families with me.

DISCLAIMER: I received this book free from Baker Books through the Baker Books Bloggers Program in exchange for my honest review.  I was not required to write a positive review, and all views expressed are my own.  I am disclosing this in accordance with Federal Trade Commission guidelines.

Everything We Need to Know We Learned While Training Dragons

I meant to share this a while ago, when I first took my three daughters (and my dad) to see "How To Train Your Dragon 2" over the summer.  But then life happened (or laziness ensued or distraction set in or insert any other excuse here), and I didn't get around to it.  Then my nieces watched it during our family Christmas celebration, and news events happened in our country, and I was reminded.

So, in the theme of things as I close out 2014, better late than never.

While I was watching "How to Train Your Dragon 2," two themes kept coming to mind.  They, coupled with something I listened to myself whisper as I held my frightened four-year-old daughter on my lap, made up three truths about life I've learned over the last several years.  And, as I watch the news each day, I see how essential it is that I teach them to my girls.

It's been too long for me to give specific references to the film, and maybe they aren't even as important as real-life examples, so here goes nothing.

1) Talking and getting to know new people is better than fighting.
Our country is on the cusp of something major.  In college I studied the Civil Rights Movement, and in the cry of silent protesters and angry crowds I see so much history being repeated.  On another front there are lines being drawn about gay rights and transgender individuals and what is Christian and what is right. Then there is addiction--both the addicts themselves and the people who desperately love them and want to be enough for them . . .

We're in a mess of hurting people, and "we" as the Church are too often stepping up to the wrong side of those lines.  Yes.  There is right and there is wrong.  But God never asked us to judge the heart of man.  He asked us to love His children.  If I insist on pointing out the right and the wrong and ignore the brokenness and desperation, am I doing that?  No.  So.  Talking and getting to know people is better than fighting.  We need each other.  We need each other for what we can learn from people who are different than us, and we need each other for what we can share with people who are different than us.  And, most importantly, we need each other because without each other I'm not sure we can ever see a true picture of the God who created each of us.

2) Work together to fight the bullies.
Maybe this lends itself to #1 up there.  We. Need. Each. Other.  Period.  There's nothing more to it than that.  There are bullies in this world.  Some of them are big and physically violent.  Some of them are small and insidious.  Some of them are in the pews next to us in our churches.  Some of them stand in our capitol buildings.  Some of them wear a badge and carry a gun.  Some of them work on our news stations or in a cubicle next to us.

But, it's important to remember that not all of the people in those roles are bullies.

As I'm involved in a Global Learners' Initiative through my daughters' school district I have learned one important lesson: NEVER go alone.  Find a friend.  A buddy.  Someone who has your back.  Because here's the thing.  The bullies are tough.  Their insecurities and ignorance and hatred make them formidable, and their desperation makes them dangerous.

So don't go alone.

Let's join together.  Alone we can get killed.  Alone we can bend and break under the pressure.  Alone we can get laughed out of the room.

If you see a bully who needs to be fought, ask a friend to join you.  If you see a friend who's fighting a battle, join in.  Don't quarrel about differences in technique or philosophy or theology or interpretation.  Just fight alongside someone who needs it.

Fight the bullies with truth and goodness.  Maybe we'll get beaten in this battle.  But we'll win the war.

3) "It might get scary, but it will be okay."
This one is my favorite.  During the great battle scene at the end of the moview, my youngest daughter crawled onto my lap and whispered that she was scared.  I wrapped my arms around her, squeezed her tightly, and whispered back, "Baby, it will be okay.  It might get scary, but it will be okay."

There is truth to this, I realized as I heard my words.  That's life, friends.  It gets scary sometimes.  But it will be okay.

What a year my family had closing out 2013 and throughout 2014.  We were betrayed by friends--publicly.  Lies were told.  Tears were shed.  Curse words were uttered.  Truth is still taking its time stepping into the light.  In the middle of all of it, a brother ended his fight with PTSD.  And now, at the end of it (we thought), my dad has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.  His prognosis is good, though the cancer is aggressive.  Still, it's cancer.  There will be surgery and, depending on what the doctors find, maybe treatments.

It might get scary, but it will be okay.

We have faith.  And we have God.  And we have each other.  And we have grace.  And we know that in the end, it will all be okay.


Let these three lessons carry us into the new year, friends.  Let this be the year that the Church stops caring about semantics and starts caring about the heart of Christ.  Let this be the year that the bullies are fought against and that the bullied find us standing with them.  Let this be the year of hope in the midst of the fear that everything really will work out in the end.  And, in the middle of it all, let us find grace and love and joy.

I Almost Missed It Too

No doubt about it!  God is good--
good to good people, good to the good-hearted.
But I nearly missed it,
missed seeing his goodnesss.
I was looking the other way,
looking up to the people
At the top,
envying the wicked who have it made,
Who have nothing to worry about,
not a care in the whole wide world.

Psalm 73:1-5, The Message


What a reminder, early this morning, as I sat on the too-small front porch of a house I want to sell as I looked out at two vans that just aren't quite as cool as the Land Rovers I see every day and listened to my too-close neighbors begin their days while their dogs bark incessantly.

Maybe it's a first-world problem, or maybe it's an American one, but I'm certain it's not just mine.  Isn't it easy to envy other people who seemingly have it made?  Isn't it easy to be discontent with the car I drive or the house I call home or the neighborhood where I live or the gifts and talents I have or everything else about my life that just isn't good enough?  Isn't it far too easy to feel like other people "have it made, piling up riches" while we are "stupid to play by the rules" (vs. 12 in The Message)?

I have often said that the greatest disservice my mother ever did me was to teach me that I wasn't any more important than anyone else.  It makes me wait in line longer than other people do, it makes me give money to church and to other people who need it, it makes me spend some of my free time working for others.  It forces me to be a little bit less selfish.

Yet, I still forget.  I still look at other people and all that they have and wonder if--how--I can get my hands on some of it.

And then I'm reminded.  Whether it's by a blown call in a football game, giving a touchdown to someone who must know he didn't score one, or an artist selflessly offering to create something to benefit other people, or a few verses from a Psalm that I've read many times before.  I'm reminded.

"No doubt about it!  God is good . . . But I nearly missed it."

God, today, please open my eyes.  Let me focus on the higher purpose.  Let my focus be You and Your goodness.

You're all I want in heaven!
You're all I want on earth!
When my skin sags and my bones get brittle,
God is rock-firm and faithful.
Look!  Those who left you are falling apart!
Deserters, they'll never be heard from again.
But I'm in the very presence of God--
oh, how refreshing it is!
I've made Lord God my home.
God, I'm telling the world what you do!

Psalm 73:25-28, The Message

The Thirty-eighth Sabbath

It was Mission India Sunday at church, and then my Sunday School class and I discussed missions.  Those teenagers are pretty smart, and they have some great ideas about what it can be like to be the Word of God to those we meet.  All of it reminded me of a song I remember listening to in my bedroom when I was their age.  It made me think that maybe the traditional means of missions--walking in to a culture and telling them everything they do is wrong, and they need to change it all to come to Jesus--wasn't good enough.  That was all more deeply confirmed in my reading of my favorite "How To" guide to missions: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (yes, I get that she wasn't really trying to teach us about missions, but she definitely got her point across with the bits about the river and the farming).  Later, the Blessings Tour further affirmed it, and yesterday's message continued it.

So, Missions 101:
* First help them experience love.  Then explain the Bible.
* Don't bring the Bible--BE the Bible.
* Missions are (is?) a reminder to Satan that we win, because Jesus already won.

Oh, the suffering souls
Crying out for love
In a world that seldom cares
See the hungry hearts
Longing to be filled
With much more than our prayers

And a young girl sells herself on Seventh Avenue
And you hear her crying out for help
My God! What will we do ?

Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!
'Til your heart breaks from their sorrow
And the pain they're going through
With a life full of compassion
May we do what we must do
Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!

All the desperate men
Are we reaching for the souls
That are sinking down sin?
Oh, cry for the church
We've lost our passion for the lost
And there are billions left to win

And another 40,000 children starved to death today
Would we risk all we have
To see one of them saved!?!

Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!
'Til your heart breaks from their sorrow
And the pain they're going through
With a life full of compassion
May we do what we must do
Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!

Why have we waited so long
To show them Jesus lives
To share salvation's song!

Why have our hearts become so proud
That we fail to see
To love them is to love God!

And a young girl sells herself on Seventh Avenue
Hear her crying out for help
What will we do?

Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!
'Til your heart breaks from their sorrow
And the pain they're going through
With a life full of compassion
May we do what we must do
Don't tell them Jesus loves them
'Til you're ready to love them too!

"Don't Tell Them Jesus Loves Them" by Steve Camp and Rob Frazier

Strange Whom He Chooses to Use

This morning was a rough time.  Ellie and I really struggle in the morning--she's too much like me for me to handle in a mature manner, and she's too much like her dad to be a morning person.  That combination leads to most mornings beginning with a fight and tears from at least one of us.  This morning it ended up being both of us.

As I cried my way through most of my morning shower--alternating between complaining to God and pleading with Him--it dawned on me (again) how hard it is to be a parent.  Many days I'm not even positive that I enjoy parenting, and most days I'm confident that I don't have what it takes.  I think most mornings I allow the arguing and the nagging and the crying and yelling (all of which come from both of us most days) to settle into my brain with a resounding, "Beka, you are a shitty mom."  Forgive the language, but that's where I settle.  Today was one of those days.  I prayed that God would help me love my job of mothering His precious girls and that He would help me figure out how to be good at it.

After searching for shoes, getting stuck combs out of hair, and reminding everyone that there isn't really time to chat while we're brushing our teeth, we left the house a bit late.  The rain made it clear we wouldn't arrive to school on time (every tardy Ellie gets is a reflection on my ineptitude as a mother, you know), so  I was still grumbling in my spirit.  Then, traffic slowed to a standstill on the highway, and my battery light popped on.  No. Time. For. This.  I pulled off at the next exit, drove around for a couple of minutes, and the light went off.  Deciding not to drive on the highway in monsoon conditions, I opted to take the back roads.  As we stopped at our first traffic light, the battery light popped on again.  I said a quick prayer that we'd make it to both of the girls' schools before the van stalled completely and continued on with our morning routine.

After we dropped Meg off, Addie and I headed to AutoZone to get the battery tested and replaced.  I was still feeling like a royal failure at everything and felt on the verge of tears.  We've discussed Addie's obsessive question-asking in the past, so it should surprise no one that she had to touch every item in the display under the cash register and ask--several times--what each item was.  I can't count the number of deep breaths I took as I patiently attempted to answer each question with both the identification and an example of use in our lives (only because she asked for it, mind you--my high school Geometry teacher could have used my question-answering skills!). 

As I handed my debit card to Tony, the kind AutoZone man, he said, "You're a great mom, by the way."

Me?  A great mom?  How did you know I needed to hear that?  He went on to explain that most parents just tell their kids they don't need to know the answer and swat their hands away.  So there was his answer.  The world's answer.  But I know that he could just as easily have said, "Huh.  Most parents don't answer their kids' questions in here.  Good work, Mom."  Instead, he used the exact words I needed to hear: "You're a great mom, by the way."

Thank you, Tony.  God used you to answer the cry of my heart. 

And thank you, God.  For both the message through Tony and for the reminder that I, too, could be the person You use to answer the cry of a mother's--or a father's or a teenager's or a stressed-out worker's--heart around me.

Book Three

The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed
Judy Shepard

Every once in a while, a film will come along that sticks with me.  It settles into my brain and sort of just grabs hold in a way that I know I'll never be the same.  I've been changed by what I've seen.  "Martha Marcy Mae Marlene" comes to mind as the most recent.  There's also "Who is Julia?," "Doubt," and "In the Mouth of Madness," to name a few.

More rarely, a book will have that same power.  I immediately think of Nobody's Fault by Patricia Hermes, Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver, and Columbine by Dave Cullen.  When I first read them, and still now years after, I feel haunted by them.  The Meaning of Matthew is one of those books.  I remember so vividly the day in October 1998 when I first heard that Matthew had been attacked and tied to a fence and left to die.  I remember feeling personally violated at the thought that people could be so heartless and hateful.  It made no sense to me.  To be honest, it still doesn't.

Judy Shepard, Matt's mom, wrote this book ten years after the murder of her son, and it still makes no sense--to anyone.  But, like so many people caught in tragic situations, she has decided to make the world different, make sense of the world, instead of the tragedy.  The honesty with which Judy writes is moving.  She doesn't paint Matt with an angelic brush and even calls out the media and others who have. 

This book is important for everyone to read--whether you think you've made up your mind about homosexuality, whether you are facing it yourself or struggling with a family member who is, or whether you think none of it will ever affect you.  It will.  It does, in ways that may surprise you.  Take a minute to learn what you can about yourself, about the people you know, and about the world in which we live.  It's never okay to hate.  It's not enough to tolerate.  As Dennis, Matthew's father, stated in his victim impact statement at the sentencing of one of the murderers, "Love, respect, and compassion for everyone is why we are here today...loving one another doesn't mean that we have to compromise our beliefs; it simply means that we choose to be compassionate and respectful of others."