Featured writing today.

Today I'm writing over at The Mudroom blog. I wrote this post a few months ago when it was hot and I hated everything. I'm better now:

Restlessness is woven into the fiber of my being.

Also, I’m fairly certain restlessness is not a spiritual gift.

I know from the Bible that God gives gifts to all of his children, and that all of his gifts are good. That’s scripture truth. I also know that all of us are also plagued with certain personality quirks and tendencies that are carryovers from genetics, human history, and Eve’s original mistake in the garden.

In my own unique personality, there are too many of these latter ‘gifts’ to count, including an absolute inability to wait (for anything) and searing impatience with heat and traffic. The Atlanta suburbs in July make me a joy to live with.

Restlessness, though, comprises a large part of my psyche. It is the lens through which I view my calling, my husband’s job, my children’s schooling, and even the geography of our surroundings.

This situational agitation comes in spurts: I go through months showing great contentment with our life, loving our community and our church and thanking God with great piety for his gifts.

And then, an explosion of discontent:

Why do we share space with five million other people?

Why do we drive ten miles to get to our church when there are ten churches within two miles from our house?

Why have they torn down another hillside of rolling trees to build another Marshalls?

A Whole Foods at that intersection is going to add ten minutes to my commute.

Why do I commute? Why do you commute?

I wonder: is the stirring in my soul the push from God I’ve been waiting for? The whisper, the urging, that is telling me to pull up stakes and make the bold move towards simplicity? I yearn to swim upstream against the pull of our culture that begs for more: more money, more hours, and more career advancement. I wonder why God is not on board with this plan. My flight from the city is barred with practicalities: our parents’ dependence on us, my teenager’s absolute refusal to move mid-high-school, and my husband’s sensible suggestion to stay put until our kids have gone to college.

They are all good reasons. I ask God, and he tells me to wait, and so I tamp down my restlessness for another six months, hoping the next time it flares up, God will say yes.

Yet through each of these cycles the question nags: is this disquiet in me, almost always simmering beneath the surface to the extent that I would pack away fifteen years of friendships and history for a change in scenery, equal to sin?

As I pray for the surrender while simultaneously hoping God will make a change, I don’t have a good answer to this question. The desire for adventure and revolution is so strong that I have a hard time counting it as a mistake, and yet I’ve walked through this season feeling like a person who has worn the wrong outfit to a party.

My faith tells me that God is not rocked by my periods of moodiness. He made me, he loves me, and he is patient when I am not (which is often). Even more, he can see down the long road and around the blind curves, with unlimited wisdom and sight distance. It only remains for me to find the balance between trusting him with what I have, while always hoping for something a little different.

Am I content with my life? Never. There is always better. I want mountains and space and neighbors and travel. I want my kids to grow up pleasantly different from their peers. I want to live a life that looks different and is different because of the hope I carry each day.

However, I have learned in the great, long waiting game to be content with God. Even when I look around and heave a great sigh and wish a great wish, I can rest in a God who writes a great story, one that is going on all around me. The secret is boiling away the temporary and clinging to the adventure in the eternal: the difficult neighbor on my street, the children in the local school that need feeding, or my own children that are navigating adolescence.

It doesn’t always look like the grand adventure I seek, but most days I can have faith that it is, because it was written by a wildly adventurous Author. 

It's Not Just for Kids

This morning my daughter and I discussed her Instagram habits.

I should say, I discussed them. She listened with the look of someone who would prefer to dive into oncoming traffic. Which was her only option, because we were in the car on the way to school.

Her Instagram isn’t bad. It’s not anything I love, but it’s not bad. It’s mostly selfies, mostly tasteful, captioned with song lyrics that lend towards power and rising above pettiness. She’s in middle school, so I doubt she’s 100% successful at practicing what she preaches. But then again, neither am I.

As we neared the school and I saw my time running out, I managed to encapsulate what I thought was the most relevant truth in a few sentences. “Listen, it’s great that you have empowering pictures and that your friends comment on how good you look, but I want your friends to know you’re more than that.”

Cue eye-roll. “Mom, my friends aren’t going to write, you’re a beautiful child of God with a purpose in an Instagram comment.”

“Fair enough, but you should have people in your life that are saying that to you. You shouldn’t go through your teenage years thinking the only thing you have going for you is that you’re good-looking. You should have people telling you exactly that: you are a beautiful child of God with a purpose. And that you’re smart and savage and fun and creative. That’s the truth that lasts longer than you have a fine booty.”

(As an aside, I’m amazed I got this much out. I am terrible at the deep talks with my kids. Days of planning and prayer yielded exactly two sentences of relevant truth. Lord help my kids. By the time it’s over I’ll just be printing brochures and leaving them on their pillows.)

She was quiet for a few minutes, and then opened up and started discussing her classes and her teachers, which I took as a good sign. 

(To teenagers reading this: we crave any information about your lives. We suck it up like internet gossip and queso. The way to our hearts is with data. Just talk to us and we’ll give you anything you want. We are hostages to your innermost thoughts.)

Later, while praying, I asked that God would wiggle that truth into her heart and let it rest there until it was needed. “Because God, she is a special piece of your creation with a specific plan and purpose.” And although I can guarantee that what I actually said to God wasn’t quite so theologically scripted, it's what came to mind afterwards that was really eye-opening.  

Guys, we pipe that truth into our kids like vitamins, hoping they grasp it as they grow older; but as adults, is it hidden in our own hearts? I prayed for God to lock it away in my teenager, but is it locked away in me?

That precious idealism we want our teenagers to live by is often lost as we grow older. It gets buried under necessity and career choice and family duties, all good things. The search for one’s calling is a broad topic, one I have surrounded myself with for months as I’ve faced my own miniature identity crisis. I ponder all of things I wanted to be as a teenager and wonder where that optimism went.

We tell our kids that they are capable of anything.  

We should be as kind to ourselves.

I’m not going to answer the question of what’s my calling today. For today, it’s enough to realize that God sees me and my teen with the same eyes. To him, we are both lovingly made, carefully crafted beings, beloved and empowered to soothe a hurting world. 

I take the truth I spoke over her this morning, my prayers for her to fly free and brave, and I whisper them to myself.

The Pit of Despair

Right now, parenting in our household slightly resembles the pit of despair from "The Princess Bride."

I say slightly because I love my kids. Also, I'm an optimist.

But I'm also telling the truth.

With four kids, all in the double-digits, two in full-blown adolescence, one on the brink, and one that feels left out because she still has two years to go until puberty, our house is not without drama. On any given day, there are always at least two children that can be termed as high-maintenance.

The other night, when the youngest had pitched a particularly impressive fit regarding a pair of wedged-booties that do not belong to her, AeB and I sat in our bedroom, exhausted and (to be honest) a bit shell shocked.

Earlier that day, he had just said that his prayer for the year was to love this year with our kids, and not merely survive it. (Thank you, Jon Foreman, for providing my oft-repeated mantra, I want to thrive, not just survive.) It seemed like the year of thriving was off to a poor start, however, when we had to send the youngest to bed early over what was basically a pair of Target shoes.

In the bleakness of the moment, AeB turned to me and said, "She just sucked one year of our life away."

AeB is not a movie-quoter by nature, but marriage has taught him to occasionally step up to the plate in order to keep pace with me. This particular instance was brilliant and I immediately went into raptures before countering with, "You are in the pit of despair. Don't even think of trying to escape... they're not even in high school yet!"

People, this is where we currently are in parenting. One day, one 80s movie quote at a time. 

Checking on my Chickens

In the summer of 2012 I went to Scotland for 12 days to help my church run a camp for teens. Earlier that year my husband had prayed for a short-term missions opportunity to open up for me, and looking back I know why God made such a big deal out of it. That trip changed my life. I was 11 years in as a stay-at-home mom and had quite literally stayed home from from everything, but that trip opened up life for me again.

Although travel and missions weren't new for me, working with teens, at a camp, was terrifying. I was desperately afraid that I wasn't cool enough, and I was right, but the kids I met there didn't care. And camp? Camp is home.

Scotland is obviously one of the best places in the world anyway, but it's special to  me because it was the first step on a long path towards reminding me that I'm a person apart from my children; that God gave me gifts separate from them, and that I'm not just a mom. As I've said here before, 'just a mom' is a tricky phrase. Being a mom IS a special calling, but I just really think that those of us that are moms are also something else.

Scotland was my first glimpse into the something else, so for me it's the most special place there is.

I went for 3 camps total, and even now I have memories so fond they are almost visceral. The youth camp is still going on there, and after two years of being away, I'm going to Scotland in ten days to visit my people. I had been praying for a chance to go and visit, and when my husband encouraged me to go, I decided not to be a contentious wife, but to submit as a wife should. And God, who is always on our side no matter whether or not we think so, provided a stupid cheap fare, so I thank him for that.

Not that I'm comparing myself to the great Apostle Paul, but I do feel a bit like I'm going to check on all of my chickens. The problem with having my heart in two places is that their lives go on as mine does, with an ocean in between. I really do have to entrust them to God-just as Paul tells Timothy, "I know whom I have believed; and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted Him until that day."

When I tried to explain to my husband how special it was, he simply said, "it smells like home." And that about covers it. And I am doubly thankful that out of all the places that God could write on my heart, he chose a place as beautiful and wild as that one.

Known by Our Deeds

It's fairly safe to say that most people, regardless of their religious identity, agree that helping people in need is a good thing. That's a broad statement, I know, but as it gets narrower we lose people.

Having compassion on the kid from Ecuador that you sponsor for $36/month is natural, even expected. Who wouldn't? God loves the poor, and we should as well.

Having compassion for your annoying, lonely neighbor or that awful internet troll is a different story.

Jesus, of course, said it the most succinctly when he said, "You have heard it said, 'love your neighbor and hate your enemy,' but I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

This is where we lose people. So we zoom out to the world and its many problems.

We are all fortunate-in a manner of speaking-to live in a time when a person can take up any cause that suits their passion: education. homelessness. slavery. racism. pornography. the environment. sex trafficking. poverty. Now more than in the last 30 years people want to talk about issues and justice, and many of them want to take action.

At church we speak often on getting involved in our community. I believe that anyone doing good for another person is worthwhile; even more, the effort towards sharing hope with the hurting can cause ripples of positivity that can change a community.

What stops us? Two roadblocks come to mind.

We are overwhelmed with the sheer need. Sending a box of clothes to an orphanage in Central America seems a drop in the bucket. You clothed 15. What about the other 300,000?

The other thing is cynicism, which stems from the realistic opinion that we can only do so much.

Over the summer I saw an Instagram post that featured a brilliant quote from a speaker at a conference about the refugee crisis. Under the caption the first commenter said:

I'm sure everyone applauds then goes on with their lives after this conference is over.

Listen. This guy isn't wrong. We do go to camp or a conference and hear a great speaker; we immediately commit to read the Bible in a year or feed the homeless, and often those moments fall away.

Does that make those moments worthless?

Is the 3 months you read the Bible every day until you got bogged down in Song of Solomon wasted?
Is the way God touched 1,000 people at a conference for naught? And if only 100 of them manage to do something for the world, does that truth somehow reduce or devalue the cause?

May it never be.

If anything, it's a reminder that humans suck without God's help. But be cheered: God is fully available to empower us to get involved in our neighborhood, our schools, our community, our country, and our world. He is able to help us not suck, and what's better, he is able to empower us to do amazing things to help the least of these.

One of my favorite organizations is the Preemptive Love Coalition. Read all about their mission here. Over the summer they used social media to ask for $35 donations to get much needed food and water to people trapped behind Isis lines in the city of Fallulah, Iraq.

People could have exercised their healthy cynicism like the fellow on Instagram. They could have said things like:

"there are so many other people to help."

Or, "why can't we help people in our own country?"

Or, "We still can't stop Isis this way."


And these thoughts, they may hold some truth. But luckily, thousands people did say:

"my $35 can do something for someone."

And, "the cause is just no matter how hard the climb."

And, "I will do my part to strike a blow against evil."

So what happened was this: hundreds of people with no hope received food, water, and the knowledge that they matter to folks in the United States; people that refused to be lazy or let glossy cynicism stand in the way of action.

We are in living in an age of action. Words and knowledge, so important in the forming of modern Christianity, matter less now in the face of a hurting world. Now more than ever, God's people need to be known by their deeds. All of us can carve out extra time or money to share, and even if it's a drop in a bucket, the person in the bucket is thankful.

A Blessing for My Teenage Daughters

Note: I wrote this to my teenage daughters (aged 13 and 15) on the eve of the first day of school (grades 8 and 10) because the speaker at our youth camp had basically told me to share with them everything I've been praying for them. This hot mess of a letter is the result.

July 31, 2016

I am writing this to you because I am not great at talking about the Important Stuff. I get sidetracked, your eyes glaze over, I start waving my hands around, and before I know it 30 minutes have gone by and I’m not sure I even communicated what I needed to.

What I’m writing today is Important. It’s Important because on July 6, God decided to show my name to our speaker at camp because He—God—had something to say to me. I cannot stress enough that THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN EVERY DAY.                

WHAT God wanted to say to me—and to you and your sister—was so important that he interrupted the speaker, and Camp, to tell us all about it.

I’ll recap what he said here:

What I have fought for, I need to pass on to you guys.

What I have prayed for you and your sister, I need to tell you so that God can make it happen.

What I have achieved with Him, you guys will have the power and grace to do better.

I’ve spent a few weeks asking God exactly what I’m supposed to bestow upon you girls, because if I’m honest, I pray for you all the time. The teenage phase has pushed me to my limits (so far) of prayer and trust that you, although you’re my daughters, are also GOD’S, and he is raising you.

I pray a lot for the stuff you’d expect me to: that you don’t hurt your body with drugs or alcohol or an unwanted pregnancy; that you don’t get your heart broken by a boy when you’re too young to recover; that you have a healthy body image and know that it’s who you are not how you look that counts.

AND THAT STUFF IS SUPER IMPORTANT…

But you could reach the age of 30 having achieved all of the above and still miss what I really want for you: that you live a life of power.

Believe me, staying away from drugs and saving yourself for marriage and being kind is a mother’s dream for her kids, but God’s dream is more and bigger: that you live a life dependent on his Holy Spirit, which will give you power to be radically kind, adventurous, encouraging, daring, loving, outlandish, patient, creative, and literally brilliant with who HE has made you to be.

It means actually loving your enemies. It means not giving a crap about what that mean girl thinks of you; and even better, hoping and praying for HER best, because she is a child of God, too. It means passing over what is safe and “just okay” for what is amazing and makes you passionate. It means saying “I don’t care if it’s normal or safe or popular or makes money, it’s hard and it’s beautiful and it’s true so I’m doing it.”

The fact that God spoke through the camp speaker wasn’t just for me, it was for you as well. Because our world needs people who love God in a new way. A way that powerfully teaches young people—YOUR PEOPLE—who He is without condemning them. A way that shows kindness over popularity and compassion over “we’re going to Heaven and you’re not.” Being that person takes work, and it takes God’s spirit, which is endlessly gracious, merciful, and loves every darn person that breathes on this planet.

Be brave. Do important things. Don’t settle for a life that is boring and empty, even as a teen, even in school. The reason camp and mission trips are so meaningful is that we get closer to the place where God’s kingdom and the world rub together (borrowing some words from our youth pastor here); in those situations we are doing God’s work with His spirit, and they feel real, like an adventure.

But life can be that way. School can be that way. Look for the thing that gives you the same heartfelt passion and exhilaration and say yes to it. It’s more of what our world needs, and can help people learn how loved and welcome they really are.

You have the power to do that in your place, with your people, if you live a life of power. 

In(Courage) post is happening today!

Here is the quickest of quicky quick links. Read and enjoy!

 http://www.incourage.me/?p=179476