when we remember who we are...even if we forgot

When we walked in to Exponential on Tuesday morning, I really thought I was going to be sick. At best I was going to sob uncontrollably from the despair that refluxed from my heart to a rancorous taste in my mouth. At worst, I thought I would just give up trying or hoping or believing for "different" or "more" or "best" and just forge a six-sided chamber with a big ol' padlock around my soul, lock it, and toss out the key.

I was in a full-on death spiral of identity crisis.

Exponential is a conference for church planters. Based on that fact alone comes some explanation of why my spiraling began. My husband Anthony and I aren't church planters, but instead are moving into the seventeenth year of him - which means us - in vocational ministry as a staff pastor. We've served at our current church for the last decade, and it is also the church we essentially grew up in and where my father himself served on staff for several years. If you didn't catch it, that makes me both a pastor's wife and a pastor's kid. I might have issues.

We walked into that first building at Exponential and it was full of a hundred booths containing thousands of resources for fresh-faced, vision-driven men and women to avail themselves of, mostly for free. There was everything from curriculum to books to web hosting to fund-raising resources to music to database management. The air was electrified with a palpable and literal buzz while networking took place and words like "planning phase," "pre-launch" and "launched" were on many lips as they told each other their stories. It was such a clear oasis of refreshment for so many who are trekking into and through the great unknown of church-planting. It was phenomenal and like watching parched sponges soaking up so much water.

And all I wanted to do was run. Away. Far, far away.

Our church "launched" a long time ago. We've tried a lot of things. We've been fresh-faced and full of ideas. We've been "the flavor." But we've also been forgotten. We've been the trend-setter, and we've been the outcast. We've been rich, and we've also been broke. We've been the neighborhood church on the main thoroughfare through town, and we've had the neighborhood bought, scraped, the land abandoned, and the traffic diverted away from us towards a bypass.

Sitting at a table in the middle of that building, with so much purpose and potential swirling around me, I felt completely and undeniably out of place. Maybe even lost. If I can get brave enough to say it, I felt abandoned.

I sent a text to my best friend telling her as much in far less thought-out words that were also way more full of panic, and asked her to pray. Trying to say it in a way that wouldn't squelch his excitement, I confessed it - a little - in broken and abbreviated phrases to Anthony. Having been to considerably more big-venue conferences than me, he tried to encourage me about pushing through the "consumer" side of things; the ten-thousand-and-one "BEST IDEAS" for all things ministry that one can sometimes feel like are being presented or vended by the booths. I knew there was truth in what he said and it gave me a little comfort, but mostly not.

When I paused for a moment I realized that I believed this conference, through absolutely no fault of its own, was going to be used as one more moment when someone - this time God - would point out everything we still aren't as a church, everything we aren't doing right, all that we should've been by now but haven't taken the right steps to become. That he would turn to us and say, "you're all wrong." And it would hurt like hell.

The only thing I did right in that moment was not run away, and maybe then only because we were a seven-hour drive from home.

I shuffled into an auditorium, climbed some stairs to a balcony on the periphery of the main seating, and sat down. With all the despair and certainty of what was to come I went through the motion of pulling out a journal, a pencil, and a laptop, as if prepared to write things down that I heard the speakers say. If nothing else, in my identity crisis I would at least have the notes serve as some sort of reference sheet of what we should be, delivered by men and women from a platform who obviously knew how to "get it right" in all the places we get it wrong. If nothing else, we could at least emulate them and fake knowing who we are in favor of being like someone else.

For twenty hours and through twenty-four speakers, that didn't happen. Not once; not even for a second. Oh, notes happened...nineteen typed pages of them. But with every twenty-minute talk given by another speaker, dread started to literally drain out of me as if someone had pulled the stopper out of a tub. I didn't know what was coming in its place, but I knew despair was leaving.

I wonder why after all these years I still sometimes slip into believing God sees me worthy of being ground to dust. Matthew - a man that walked with Jesus after coming out of a life where he collected the taxes from his own people to pay to the very men that raped and murdered their sisters and brothers - saw things so clearly: "If your child asks you for bread, would any of you give him a stone? Or if your child asks for a fish, would you give him a snake? Even though you’re evil, you know how to give good gifts to your children. So how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?"

Hope would've been a good gift this week. Peace in my tumultuous soul would've made all the difference. I got those things, utterly and miraculously. But more than those, what I believe I got - what we got, what we carry with us like vessels - is this:
Identity.

In a room full of 5,000+ people, getting lost in the crowd is not hard. But he kept whispering, "I see you." When thirty-plus experts in their fields pour out their insights, feeling amateur is almost automatic. But he kept whispering, "You can do it. You ARE doing it." When the pull to compare and contrast threaten to tear off our limbs, he kept whispering, "You are all ONE body." When awe and envy and the desire to imitate bored into our pysche, he kept whispering, "Be you, completely in Me."

Every woman and man that was given an audience during Exponential spoke with such authority. And to the last, each one wound us up, turned us around, and said, "Now go. Tell your part of the world how lavishly and infinitely they are loved by Jesus in everyday ways by being uniquely YOU!" We were not charged to turn our churches into mini models of theirs. We weren't told to scrap the old churches or try to follow some delusion of being trendy by forming a new, cooler community of faith. Simultaneously, they called out courage in the ones who are stepping into forming new churches from the DNA up, and renewed courage in those of us that come home to established churches.

Our church has existed for 30 years. About twenty years ago she had her name changed. She's now been called by her current name longer than she was ever the name that went before. Sometimes, often times, I still hear her called by her old name in the community. I got to thinking about that and her diverted road and the other churches that have grown up in the area, some of which now contain people who formerly attended. Those things are hard and painful sometimes. There's a lot there that can exacerbate an identity crisis. But after a week like that of Exponential, those things start to burn off in the light of truth.

We are a people that loves God, loves others, and serves the nations. We are a people that reaches out to all kinds of people with the message of God's love and forgiveness. We are ambassadors of love, mercy, grace, and truth willing to set ourselves up as embassies, to say to the hurting, the questioning, and the wandering "come and see!" so they can find refuge and warmth.

He has called us by his name and we are his.

I expected a reprimand. I knew there'd be an agenda and a bullet list of all that's wrong. I prepared for a crumpling up and tossing of our current M.O. and some elaborate multi-step plan to change everything. But that's because I forgot how deeply known we are. That's not what we got. There's refocused vision and insight, and certainly some needed correction and some shifting to take place. But more than anything there is a very real sense that from this day forward our church could know who she is and be herself fully.

This is what the Lord says: Forget what happened in the past, and do not dwell on events from long ago. I am going to do something new. It is already happening. Don’t you recognize it? I will clear a way in the desert. I will make rivers on dry ground. - Isaiah 43:18-19

When I'd Rather Pitch A Fit

I've made some serious progress in the world of materialistic winnowing around Costa Cottage over the last several months; well, years.  Rooms can be cleaned quickly even at their worst.  There is a place for most everything.  But when it comes to "everything in its place" I'm resolved to the truth that it don't come easy, baby.  There is, after all, another independent adult with a differing mode of operation when it comes to "stuff", and three children that seem to need to make messes or hang on to scraps of paper or inconsequential toys because of budding sentimentality.  It really is a day-to-day work in progress to keep us sifted, shifted, and stewarded well.

Because of the realization of this perpetual nature to winnowing and the bigger awareness of other things being of higher importance (things that aren't "things" like our relationships with each other), I haven't bent over backwards to tackle any major winnowing projects in some time.  There are a couple of areas that need the most attention: paperwork and laundry.  We're handling these, but there isn't real order in place to keep us from being behind the eight ball with these two areas.  I'll get to working on a system for these soon.

But the last room standing in my house needing serious attention is my garage.  Now, I know, we've been here before.  But remember there was a move two+ years ago, the addition of a kid, several more years of life, and the nearly inevitable accumulation that accompanies all of the above.  For reasons that confound me, it appears we are to never have a garage with a working garage door.  At the last house the door stopped working within a week of moving in.  Here it took a little longer; a month.  So in both places, the garage stopped being a place for cars to dwell, but rather became complete dumping grounds for a sundry discarded items: furniture no longer used, boxes that never got emptied after the move, off-season clothes, old toys no one plays with, stuff someone gives us that we should've said "no, thank you" to.  My guts churn at the bedlam in that room.  I'm not even kidding.

This week is spring clean up week in our small town.  It's brilliant, really.  The city sets out dumpsters on Main Street and city-limit dwellers can bring everything (excluding household trash) to the dumpsters for free the entire week.  It seems like the perfect time to do the garage.  And boy, I have been gung ho.  Until two hours ago.  After wrestling and wrenching myself and the garage door to get it open, surveying the situation, tears, and a flood of complete frustration, I realized cleaning out the garage...once again...isn't going to happen.  Not this week.

The last several weeks have been amazingly busy.  Fulfilling, but fall-into-bed busy.  They've also included out-of-state and out-of-country trips for Ma Luffin Mayun.  He will come home tomorrow from his latest trip.  I've had an increased work load in and out of the house, related and unrelated to him being gone.  Here's what I realized today staring at that cesspool that is our garage: I could get it done this week.  I could.  I'm not afraid of hard work.  There are a lot of times I can work circles around folks.  But to do that this week, it would come with a cost:

-It would be at the expense of my husband, whose trips haven't been vacations, but full of hard work coupled with the challenge of being away from home and family and the familiar. 

-It would be at the expense of my kids who have already been down to one parent (who absolutely doesn't act the same when she's flying solo) so much the last several weeks, and who could use the comfort and beauty and chaos that is the five of us together in a "normal" week.

-It would come at the expense of myself, which is worn out from the hectic schedule and could use some rest and recovery and self-imposed grace this week.

When I count up the cost and make the decision to say no to winnowing the garage this week, I sound so level-headed and well-prioritized.  But I'm incredibly grouchy about it.  I can tend towards self-reliance and I don't like to not be able to do something, especially if I think it is several clicks past overdue.  I've cooled down, but I wanted to flat-out pitch a fit; stomp my feet, cuss, go on a tirade about how this family let the garage turn into a dump and that it is not just my job to keep things in order around here, and demand that everybody stop everything until it's clean or until I say otherwise even if it takes days.

Man, that still all sounds really appealing, actually...

But I am wise enough at least to know that to not do it this week is right.  I do know that I will not be sorry for saying no to the good thing of cleaning out the garage and choosing the better thing of deepening relationships with my four treasures and giving grace to myself.  As I resign to it and practice that "no", it will get easier as the week progresses to lose myself in the "yes".

And one day, my garage will be clean.  Hopefully sooner than I can imagine...

     

An Ode to Adjustment

In 2011, we stretched out into an additional 800+ square feet of house and a swagger wagon of sorts  that will seat seven. We have a flock of eight hens,and spent most of the year caring for our dog and that of our best friends who relocated overseas. My hair grew. Additional weight accumulated. We even accrued unforeseen debt; some out of necessity (is that an oxymoron?), some out of stupidity.

I'm not bragging or complaining or lamenting. I'm just saying.

It's been a strange thing. In a year that in some not-so-small ways has been more about acquisition than winnowing – buying a larger home, a larger vehicle, a larger stock of animals – it's felt strange and difficult and somehow false to write about winnowing, at least the kind that I had grown so accustomed to when we were trying to abide – two adults, three children, ten fish*, and one dog – in just over 1100 square feet. If not completely false, I have at least felt duplicitous in a lot of areas; high ideals and aspirations to steward, save, sift, and shift, but mediocre execution.

2011 held the certainty of change for us. The whole year was about finding the fit into new realities: a new home, Brilliant Beauty's last year in elementary school (gulp), best friends moving to Asia, the singularly most travel-intensive year ever for Ma Luffin' Mayun (40+ days out of the country), and the constancy of flux that comes with a 4- and 2-year-old.

Hm. It makes sense that there would be a jarring of my status quo winnowing woman self.

I don't know where I'm going with all of this. I might feel that an apology should be made or an excuse attempted for not writing much here of late. In fact, I know I feel that way. But I realize that to make an apology for shifts and changes and seasons is a lot like seeking forgiveness for growing pains in your legs during the middle of the night. Once again, it just is what it is, and I think I'll not apologize this time.

I feel steadier now. Like I have my sea legs back under me for faring the waves of winnowing, separating the good from the bad, in 2012. I hold in my heart a well-spring of gratitude for all we gained in 2011, even in our losses.

And here will once again be the narrative. I don't know if you will read it, if you are still reading. But I do know this: I will write it.  

*We winnowed the fish - um - unintentionally.  We're down to 6.

Literary Laryngitis

I think it's safe to say I'm in good company.  ACB is feeling it.  SBB is, too.  And it's not a topic I haven't hashed out with KakiBlack any less than a thousand times prompted by a hundred different circumstances.

This life is not perfect.  I am not perfect.  It is what it is.

I make it my goal to be authentic in my writing.  I figure it serves no one well for me to write about anything other than the life I genuinely live with the voice that is organically mine.  I long ago made peace with the sort of laws of imperfection that exist around us all; things are not always as we wish them to be; the hair, the clothes, the status, the days just don't always fit as comfortably as we'd like; there's that something we can't seem to quit, or that something we can't seem to begin.  However, the more days, months, years, and experiences I accumulate the less I want to be anything other than what I am in all the becoming.  I'm okay with the work in-progress.  And though I don't love everything about myself or my life or my way of doing things, I don't spend a lot of time trying to be something I am not or comparing myself to any one else.

Until the times when I do.

I want to be a writer.  Like, a lot.  I have loved to write and photograph and chronicle as long as I can remember.  (Ironically, for a woman that doesn't answer her phone I feel like I have a lot to say.)  In recent months I have dreamed of it and ached to do it, disappointed when there isn't time and so contented when there is.  I have brainstormed topics and thought some things through.  I have networked a little here and there in places where blogs can get a little bit more exposure (because, after all, writers want to be read in the end).  And I have read other people's blogs, particularly those of other "successful" women bloggers. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  Um, not so much.

What I have found myself doing is sinking underneath the sea of other writers out there.  Even now just thinking about it I can feel my chest tightening at the thought of the overwhelming number of female bloggers/writers who have carved out a niche or branded themselves into these forces to be reckoned with.  They write about everything: motherhood, home life, marriage, career, fashion, food, homesteading, crafting, spirituality, health.  You name it, it's being written about, and often better - or at minimum, more thoroughly - than I could write about it.  At least that is how it feels because that measuring stick I pride myself in not pulling out much is not only pulled out, but is measuring my writings against these - or worse, my life against theirs - and I'm carving out notches to mark all the places where I don't measure up.

I hate that feeling.  And all the measurements and comparisons seem to tighten like a vice grip on my throat, on my written voice in particular.  I ask questions of myself I've never asked before: could I write more like her, about more of that?  Should I twist this thing and contort it to try to make money out of it?  Do I continue to nurture a deep-rooted passion regardless of who notices or am I looking to peddle some gimmick that will stroke my own ego by raising the number of readers?  I hate these questions.  This is not who I am.

I believe I have a healthy and balanced confidence in my own writing, and in this life I live as a whole.  And to have allowed myself as much time as I have lately to make comparisons and draw misguided conclusions severely erodes that confidence and my morale.  There are some exceptional women writing some exceptional things out there, and some who aren't.  And there are some who paint a picture of an unattainable perfection, an I-have-it-all-together-at-all-times-ness, that I can't identify with but have wondered lately if I should fake.  Then, I remember.  There are a lot of writers, but there isn't another one with my voice . . . because my voice is only mine.  And your voice is only yours.  It's worth adding to the chorus. 

If you've forgotten or maybe even doubted, you're in good company. 

Use it.  Don't lose it.

       

Completely-Worth-It Ice Cream Carnage

It's flipping hot in Georgia.  You've gotta do what you gotta do to get cool.

Then comes the clean up and a cuddle...

Yep.  Completely worth it.

A Monday Meme

My friend Gingertheginger sent me a link to this blog.  As blogs often do, that blog linked me here.  Then I jumped over to my own blog and decided to keep the rabbit trail going.

What a tangled web we weave, huh? Occasionally it's alright to get tangled.

The meme I thought I might tag along behind is simply images of "morning".  The ones who posted their links showing their participation in the meme have such lovely pictures and reflections on life or where they presently find themselves.  We went camping last week from Thursday to Saturday.  Sunday was Father's Day and today Ma Luffin' Mayun hit the road for a five-day camp with hundreds of teenagers.  And though, by these factors combined, I find myself once again at a place where far too many clothes, dishes, toys, and shoes are scattered to all the wrong places and anything but clean and tidy, I will choose to see my images of "morning" - exactly this morning - as lovely.  They show a life well-lived whether or not it is always superficially well-maintained; the beautiful imperfection of it all.  Thank you, 3 from here & there for the idea.  Thank you, PostmodernPescatarian for being the "in the flesh" friend reminding me even through simple words on a computer screen that who I am is who I want to be.  And thank you God, for this life full of messes.

And now, "Morning" . . .

My bed that called my name to no avail most of the morning.

A kid's-eye view of the living room mayhem

Laundry that's been folded since Wednesday
but not put away.

Camping stuff that's been sitting in this spot since
Saturday.

The view over my sink full of dirty dishes -
my Korea-dwelling KakiBlack and me fifteen years ago.

And my favorite: an unexpected note left for us this morning by
Ma Luffin' Mayun before he left and while we all still slept.

How about you?  What would you think of or use to describe "morning"?

Using It Or Losing It One Year Ago

In February I decided I would try to take a look back at the past year while also looking ahead to the future and while trying to live in The Now.  All clear?  Great.  Let's move on.

Here's a reminder from twelve months ago and an update.  You can click on the red words for the links back.

- The bane of my existence: the telephone
Wow.  Still hate it.  Still working on it.  Trying to do better.  Sigh.

- Reflecting on mommydom last Mother's Day
This quote still rings as true to me today as it did one year ago: "Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own."

- The Mother Lode of clean up jobs 
I have not gotten our new garage completely winnowed, and it STILL doesn't hold a candle to this beastly job.  I don't ever want to do that again.  We are already planning the final clean up and out of our current garage in the fall.  It makes absolutely no sense to try and do it anytime now in the sweltering heat, so when the weather starts to cool we will tackle the remaining boxes - most of which just need to move on out to the thrift store.  Use it or lose it, right?

- Some humor
I still chuckle looking at these ridiculous photos.

How about you?  Where were you a year ago?  Check your course; where'ya headed this time next year?

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