Penning Prayers on Paper.

Prayers on Paper.  My first journal I nicknamed Penning the Soul because that's what the Lord was doing with me -- writing my heart within the lines of scripture and notes and prayers on paper.  He funneled my emotional spirit using one camp counselor, one little black notebook, and my desire to grow with Jesus.  This counselors prayer journal suggestion began to reaped growth in me, internally.

Prayer journals.  Writing, focused, a way to read and scribble through Scripture, to scrawl thoughts on paper, to keep the brain organized and flowing.  I remember telling a friend a week later on a camping trip about my new prayer journal, with full excitement at such a solution.  And now here I sit, nearly twenty years later, and look at the years of prayers contained in pen.

I thumb through them, noting how many scriptures were circled and underlined and remarked on in my pages.  Remembering the tenderness of my heart to the Lord through the years, and seeing my cries and struggles and rejoices lined out before me.  Without opening, the covers bring back memories, of days in the Philippines, my couch on Krefeld, Taylor breakfast mornings, angered confusion through '09, with boys and trips and dreams in-between.  There's a years notes from a challenge to read the whole Bible, and so many times I laid out life choices with fear and trembling and begging for direction from the Lord.  Oh, how He used pen and paper to grow me closer to him!

I've kept them all these years, thinking some day I may use them in writing.  Perhaps referring back to a time He grew me, or an answered prayer, or a way to mark his work in my life.  But today I pull them out from layers of storage, slightly coveting how tender I used to be, but knowing its not the only way God speaks to me.

I'm thankful for the years of growth he's given me.  I'm thankful for the prayers answered, and unanswered.  For a home to rest my soul, a husband who holds my heart, and ministry that continues to provide hope.  I'm thankful for that young Taylor camp counselor, and direction God continued to provide for me each step along the way.  And tonight as I look at the spread before me, I'm thankful for the way he wrote his Word in my heart through penning prayers on paper.

Spode.

 

Spode.  They are the festival of Christmas.  They are beautiful and fragile and timeless all at the same time.  They are the look of the table, decorated with careful thought.  They are the feeling of tradition, home, on December nights.  They are the treasure that unviels each holiday season, and hide tucked away like advent, awaiting the coming King again amidst the months between.

 

My family holds a tradition of Spode.  My mother gathered it, in pieces and boxes, packing it as her own when her parents were no more.  An heirloom she cherished, a piece of heritage that only Christmas could behold.  We used them each year, covering an evergreen tablecloth with red candles and holly leaves with berries spruced inbetween.  They charmed the Christmas' of years at Homerich, and left comfort in our lives with the roots they grew and the food they served.

 

The Spode wasn't shared after my mom's death, though many of us had heart strings attached.  My brother went and purchased his own set, complete with the evergreen rims and presents around the base.  I waited in coveted longing, the season boldly showing the absence of Spode.

 

As engagement for Mark and I unfolded, Spode began to arrive, wrapped with ribbons as bows.  We agreed to leave it off the registry, yet somehow the sentimentaly of the story was told.  Bread bowls, dinner plates, and tea pots unpacked, each tied with a note from one of Mark's aunts.  The Spode heritage began Smith, but now blurred with Stone, just like the heritage we now vowed to create.

 

This year I thought of the Spode with fondess, then hesitated knowing the hectic holiday that instead was abreast.  No Spode would don the table, no plates would carry family dinner.  Yet I breathed assuredly, knowing the faithfulness that grew below my bossom.  Our children will know the story; our children will carry the heritage of Smith and Stone, sharing Spode dinners and traditions for years to come.  What tangible inheritence of the lives of familys, of generations bearing legacy.  What joy to know that Christmas blessings will, for Stone and Smith, still be served on Spode.

 

 



Baby Things I Don't Do.

This comes with a little bit of hilarity, a seriousness that's flippant but grounded, and perhaps a warning...

My beloved author Shauna Niequist writes a chapter in her book, Bittersweet,  "Things I Don't Do" and I think back on it often with such freedom.  Because the worlds ideas or expectations, the feminine or self ideas or expectations, the should do, would do, could do, don't do list sometimes seems endless, but her list was like, "ahhh... thank you!"

My friend Bekah Wallace wrote a post a few months ago I loved too, regarding these concerns as a mom, and I thought, "whew... thank you!" as she took the pressure off.  Somedays I feel like if I don't do cloth diapers or make my own baby food or feed fruits and vegetables at dinner.... If I do let my child watch TV or drink straight apple juice or cry until they sleep, then somehow I have let someone, or myself, down.

So perhaps this is just the beginning of the freedom, and the learning.  Noting now, first, the baby things I don't do, won't do.  To myself, and to prewarn, re-warn others so questions are averted and disappointment can be handled internally, without me.

So here's the start.  Baby things I don't do:

1. Seven Day Baby Pictures:  I'm not into awkward poses, naked gestures, and babies coming from buckets.  Sorry.

2.  Maternity Pictures:  Again, sorry to disappoint.  Those monthly Facebook post glare at me, and the professional photos find me squirming.  So I'll be hiding this belly with prudence and poise.

3. Weekly Sticker Pictures:  I know this is the big trend, but I think I'm going to choose to miss out.

4. Smocked Dresses:  Welcome to the South.  But my mama heart is still midwest and that means no smocked.  No way.  Never.  Why smock when there's Gymboree and Janie & Jack and adorable matching floral anything...

5.  Southern Boy Outfits:  Oh dear, rolling my eyes.  Hate them.  Give me a boy with John Deere and brown boots and mud on his hands any day.

6. Princess Themed Anything: Sorry, but happily ever after only happens in heaven.  And that's what I want my girl to learn.  Not about false truths that princes' here finish your life, and that body is perfect and you are the center of the world.  Can't do it.  Against my convictions.

7. Elf on the Shelf:  Seriously, what happened to Advent, awaiting Emmanuel?

My Carriage is Broken.

I'm reading a story in a book loaned from a friend, its poignant truth still laboring through my daily thoughts, convicting and convincing...

"A man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his carriage should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him if we saw him wringing his hands, and blubbering out all the remaining mile, 'My carriage is broken!  My carriage is broken!'"

~John Newton

As Quoted in The Roots of Endurance

John Piper, p 68

What do I choose to see?  The mansion of glory God has bestowed for me, promised bright heavenly at the end of this road?  Or the broken pieces of life I feel in the heaviness of the walk to get there?  Are my eyes lifted and hopeful, optimistic in things He has guaranteed?  Or downcast in distraction, measuring with complaint the rubble at my feet?  Do I see heaven awaiting?  Or cling to the dust of this world?  Oh to wonder for the hope of the unseen, rather mumble after the frayed pieces around me!

Lord Jesus, lift my eyes, cast off the dirtiness in my heart.  Let my hope and sights be forwarded to heaven, where one day we two will meet.

Safety Stolen in Never Neverland.

Most days these days I just want to get in my car and be home.  And by that I mean the home I once knew.  The Michigan home with my mom, with the family that felt like it did when I had my mom, with the love and safety I felt welcomed by at most every turn.

Most days these days I just want to have her to talk to, to speak every word I think and feel and just dump them at her feet.  To have her insight and knowledge, her similar values pouring love and foundation and steadiness to my unstable days.  I want her care for family and her understanding to give breath to mine as I fight upstream trying to figure this out.

Most days I just want to be a kid on her lap, a teen at her table, an adult at her counter and spill out everything I think and feel and have her take it in, safely, lovingly, her mom-way.  I want her confidante, the way I trusted her, the way I knew the words that came from her were safe.  I want her to be with me, walking these roads, and caring about these steps.

Most days these days I just want to slip into never-never land and wish it true.  Wish that safety wasn't stolen, and I that could find her love, her support, her guidance, her secrecy, her trust, her values and live steadily in them....

Revolving Door.

Many days I want my grandma's life.  She has lived within the same 8 mile radius all 83 years.  She has resided in homes from farms to city-dwellings to suburban ranches to homestead condos.  She raised her four children in that same sphere, with them still under her care and mutually caring today.  Each now lives within fifteen minutes of her home, and all her grandchildren (ten plus spouses) and great-grand children (marking twenty-four this year) reside within the same 20 mile circle.  Her photo bulletin board is collaged with family photos, each known by heart and name, all close and dear to her home and soul.

Grandma's house is always busy. Her children chatter over coffee, grandchildren drop off great-grandchildren for childcare, and others meander in and out with this and that and everything in between.  Over the years she has filled her home with countless Christmas gatherings, birthday parties, Easter dinners, game nights, and summer sleep overs -- all long anticipated and hopefully awaited.

Her friends are known in the family.  Five best friends from grandma's Kindergarten class still have lunch each month, with a high school friend added to her calendar weekly.  Friendships through the years hold true: from Calvin Christian School families to South Grandville Church.  For thirty years Grandma has dined in the same restruant each morning with the same group of 16 people, a Breakfast Club established and committed for life and all the daily happenings inbetween.  Friendships born, formed, raised, and lived all in Grandville, Michigan with every context understood and memory lived together.

Grandma's circle is small in geography, but spilling over with love.  It's layered with history, embraced with warmth, and stitched snug with those who care because of the years of dedication, memories, and challenges they've experienced together.  What a beautiful life.

God has called me to a different life.  A life of revolving doors.  I sat at my kitchen table last January gathering four friends for our first Cooking Club and realized within two years, they would disperse to Malaysia, Spain, and Virginia.   That about sums up my how I feel most days in Charlotte -- people either coming or going into my heart and life, but very few staying.  A transient place to be, and my heart feels the tired tension of it.  Finding it necessary to care deeply in friendships that are temporary,  form friendships with little history and flimsy future, and live with constant good-byes and while remaining hopeful for hellos.

I moved 30+ times in the years from 18-29.  My five best friends (bridesmaids) live in five different states.  My memories are shared and made with those on 5 continents.  My family is 800 miles away.    My wedding invite list consisted of people residing in 12 states.  My phone bill shows calls to Seattle, Greenville, Ann Arbor, Indianapolis, Byron Center, Denver, Raleigh, Milwaukee to Chicago.  My husband is only really known to my Charlotte people, and my family only really known to my Michigan people.

I know some of these are privileges, but most days, I just want everyone here: at my table, in my city.  I want to stop by the Busschers on a Friday night with games to play.  I want Amy at my table for chicken turnovers and Kate in my green room with coffee.  I want to take Jenny, Missy, and Laura to Zada Janes and picnic in the park with Kate, Clara, and Grace.  I want love in my space.

But God called has me here, with a life with a revolving door.  He gives and takes away. As Judy leaves, Kendra comes.  As Trish packs, Lauren decorates.   My grandma's life is beautiful and full and filled with longevity in space and place and people and purpose.  She is known and loved and enveloped and satisified in geography and relationship.   My life is a constant flow of new and unknown, retelling one-dimensional histories and creating distant futures, only connected or known as present.  The challenge to me is this: trusting God while releasing those I let go and welcoming those I  let in.

In Four Chapters.

My friend Trish and I talk often about how life is... lifey.  A statement to encompass our thoughts and emotions regarding the basics and norms and routines of what is life -- the laundry, the grocery store, the errands, the TV show, the alarm clock, the meal prep.  These "lifey" things need to be done, but somehow we get lost in the Disneyland thought that all appears fun or bliss or delightful, like birds singing out windows while we're happily twirling in skirts with candles glowing and merrily dusting the shelves.

We like things to look forward to.  We like big hurrahs.  We like plans on the calendar, weekends away, and dinner with friends.  We like planes to Europe and hiking in mountains and beaching with 25 friends, 3 times a year. We like Derby hats and Costa Rica surrongs and the pleasure of Starbucks in the afternoon with friends.  These are things that bring us great joy, that spark anticipation in the weeks leading, and cultivate conversations and friendships and memories and flourishing delight. They bring a fullness to our days, our years, our hearts.  Causationaly, when life felt lifey, we'd quickly plan a fun Saturday outing or weekend getaway or day trip to Charleston.  Anything to avoid the "lifey" slump -- to keep our lives fresh, our hearts awake.

Over the past year, I have diligently reflected on this perspective and filtered thoughts between adventure and "lifey-ness."  I've watched people from afar, and listened to those close.  I've stared around Trader Joes as every mother, young and old, fill their grocery cart once again this week, as they did the last.  I see neighbors walk to the mailbox and unload carseats and lug in briefcases today, just as they will tomorrow.  I've sat with mommy friends who play on the floor today, just as they did in January and will still in July.  I've listened to women prepare Bible studies for this week, as they will the next four, and the past twenty four.  I've watched empty carts go into Target and gas tanks into BP this week, just like they did the last, and leave full but only for another week...

Many days, life is... lifey.   A lot of days I find myself peering at this thought and pausing at the motions and being confused and pouty with the notion.  I want sweeping romance!  I want Braveheart epics!  I want African adventure!  I want real-life novels and movies and one-hour snipits of Primetime that appear so... full and fun and frivolous!  I like exciting!  I like the hurrah and drama and the exploration and the creation!  New, afresh, alive, anticipation!  !Voila!

But then God draws me to himself, and to his Word, and redirects my vision, my heart, my focus, and my eyes.  He asks me to slow my dreaming, quiet my comparing, and simply... be faithful.  If there is one thing he has talked to me about this year, it is is:

 "When life is lifey, be faithful."

I spent all of fall in an inductive study of the book of Ruth.  What stared at me each week, was the humble boringness of most of her tasks, the completely unknown of what would become, yet her choice to be faithful in each role.

I like to think of her life like a great two-hour film, with its opening scene of grief, the drama of the dusty road, the role play of relationships coming to Bethlehem, the meeting in the grains and scandelous love scene to follow...  I like the drama, the intererst, the way her entire life is written beautifully in four chapters, and I'm swallowed up in the sea of love and bliss and babies and the sweeping of a grandeur story along the way...

So I ponder.  And I reminisce: if my life were in four chapters, it'd read pretty good.  Cockily, I could line up great tales of camp or teaching, adventures of travel, spotlights in high school, or things done with kids...  I could layer stories like poetry of marriage and friendships and the all that blossoms within.  Then add seasons of drama, crisis, and emotions...  Four Chapters, sure, I got that!  But that's not how life is lived.  Life doesn't gather events like pride on an abbacus or hop only on stepping stones...

So I sit with Ruth.  I re-read. I pause and let it sit, let it sink in.  Let it flesh out like hours and days, not verses and plucked episodes. Most of Chapter One presented long melancholy and probably sad monotony.  Marraige, living with in-laws, getting water from the well, baking bread, feed the men... and time goes on day by day, year by year, more water, more bread, more meals... Three compositions of dying and death, dirt roads and dust.  Feet heavy with sorrow, relationships bequeathed with confusion, and minutes melded with tears.

Then with great fan-fare -- no, actually with a dusty walk for days upon days upon days, comes Chapter Two.  In the months and seasons of harvest and gleaning and threshing, Ruth continues the tasks set before her.  She walks the edges of the field, picking up each kernel of dropped wheat, adding to her meager stack from today, just as she did yesterday, just as she will do tomorrow.  Months past and she beats the wheat on the threshing floor.  All morning she's been at it, and still now this afternoon, callouses still brooding from weeks before.  Day after day of these simple tasks...

Chapter Three brings all of love in one conversation, then waiting to find her fate -- one night rapturing a whole tale with drama on its own...

With Chapter Four comes a wedding and a baby, ignoring the nine months of pregnancy, which is actually about 40 weeks or 280 mornings of nausea or large belly or waiting...  Then mornings waking and hours feeding and dinners setting and baths cleaning... Then a quick conclusion, a summation and wrap-up of the entirety of her life all at once, as if with a bow or ribbon tied on top.  All of Ruth, in four  chapters.

In Ruth's Four Chapters, all the dramas and traumas are actually small stitches woven into one long life of living a lot of small moments, faithfully.  She didn't know she wold live in epic fore-tale of Christ's birth.  She didn't know she would be named amongst the line of Jesus.  She only knew she had to walk the dirty road, thresh the wheat another day, find a squatting hole once more, nurse the baby another dawn....  It wasn't the episodes that made her such a woman of hope, of dignity, of nobility (Proverbs 31).  But it was the faithful choices along the way.

So when life feels lifey, when there are no adventures to be had, no birds out your window.  When the laundry is full another day, and the dishwasher once again calls your name... Learn a lesson from Ruth:

When life is lifey, be faithful.

Audience of One [Two].

I stare at the strollers parked aside the hall:  the B.O.B., Britax, and Urbo lined with the others.  I watch the mom's, critiquing them from haircuts to necklaces, and if their wearing shorts, dresses, or jeans.  I peer at their children, evaluating unkempt hair or cute accessory, matching socks or bulging diaper.  I listen to the words tossed like ping-pong balls between -- from "yes ma'am" and "listen and obey" to "stop that!" and "get in here!"

In my daydreams, I'm groping imaginatively through shelves, peaking around the corner to see what the last mom had -- Melissa & Doug?  Target brand?  The Land of Nod?  Consignment sale? What is best?  What is in?

Then Pinterest blinks unyieldingly; Facebook flashes every child on the screen.  Then there's Baby Wise, Baby Boot Camp, and Bringing Up Bebe.  All the while, women in my circles speak their interest or give their insight...

And inwardly I'm full of checklists and to-dos and notes and brands and feeling the inner me interrogated...

And...

I'm not even pregnant, nor trying...

Yet here I am, collapsing under the self-incriminating and society-inducing pressure.  Babies babies babies.  Kids kids kids.  Brands, styles, colors, cribs....   Words spoken, implied, pressure induced....  Books borrowed, blogs read, and baby names reviewed...  Encroaching, en-reaching, enveloping me all so much I just want to either crawl away into a corner and hide for the next ten years, or pop like an exploding ballon just for fresh air so I can breath.

I find myself sitting and thinking and completely coming undone inside and wishing for God to just open the heavens for help in it all...

And he does.   He reminds me:  That I am made, created, loved, and adored always and for, an Audience of One.  It is he who made me, who created me.  And it is He who one day will make and create a child out of the love of me and Mark.  And it is He who will train and teach me to love that child, to dress that child, to create safe and sacred spaces in our home and life for that child.  It is He who I will, and already have, received approval from, to mother that child.

There are days when I get caught up in trying to be the mother I feel pressure from to be.  Either to be my mom, or Mark's mom, or the suburban Charlotte mom.  To look the part, act the part, have children who fit the part.  But that's not who God has called me to be.  He's called me to be surrendered, so that it is only He who I see.

As mothering takes its root someday in me, I am called to learn and live and walk and breath what God is reminding me...

That I live, I mother, for an Audience of One [Two: Mark].

Audience of One.

What sweater?  What color?  What table?  What desk? 

What earring, what lipstick, what shoe, what's said?

The freshman pressure of college had gotten to our heads...

Emily and I sat on the old, brown tweed sofa, trailered down from Gun Lake and nestled under our wooden loft in the dorm room.  Both of us were frazzled and frustrated -- with ourselves, with this feeling, with the pressure under which we were living.

The cute clothes, the clear skin, the conversations we were hoping to make.  All of it swarmed around us like bees in a hive and we were becoming just one more frantic part of it.  Something needed to change...

We stopped.  We talked.  We challenged.  We changed.  Sitting right there on that couch.  We made a vow to each other, and to God, to live with an Audience of One.  To live in a way that our lives matched the call of our hearts, knowing our heads were the connector of the two.

So on that couch the rule was made:  One outfit.  One outfit per day.  What you put on in the morning, what what you wore that day.  The whole day.  

We knew our heads had turned astray our hearts, and our closet routine had gone all a-rye for the sake gaining the interest of others.  We wanted the guy in chapel to notice our shirt, and the girls in English to notice our skirt, and the athletes at dinner to notice our shoes...  So we stood at the closet... thinking and changing...  minutes wasted: analyzing, staring, wondering... all over which cardigan to wear!  Then there was still the moments in the middle -- anxious all day if we fit in with our hair and makeup and clothes and disposition!

So the vow was set, and the discipline was made: an Audience of One, learned by one outfit a day.

And what relief and joy and wholeness God granted!

No longer was college life consumed with fitting in, but with feeling alive and free and finding who He meant us to be!

This story has found its way into so many conversations, now twelve years later.  I relay it in Small Group, in girl talk, in my own head...  For still today, it's one outfit a day.  What began as discipline became freedom and a foundation in Christ.

What appeared as a war of clothes,
Was a war over my heart.

But God won,
And on that couch he taught me,
To live for an Audience of One.

The Called Life.

I know many who are called to be missionaries.  Some who are hoping to be.  Some who are.  Some who have their mind's set on Asia or Africa, some who have their hearts knocking the neighbor next door...  But today I dwell on the fact that ALL Christians are called to be missionaries.  Here, now.  Not then, not when....

A dear friend of mine, Mike Knight, is an incredible example of this called life.  The first time I met him, he was clear he was heading to Namibia (Africa) and that seminary was his training ground to bring Truth through the lies of heresy.  He's been to Namibia most years, to the same place, same spot since 2002, administering the work of the gospel.  I love this longevity, and clear presence and relationship of his call.  What what I appreciate most, though is during this "meantime" struggle to have his heart there and still be under training here -- is that he has a job at the Boys and Girls Club, providing himself a meager income, but also bringing the hope of Jesus day after day to youth in Charlotte, North Carolina.  In Charlotte, or Namibia, Mike is living a Called Life.

My friend Blair does both.  She has a passion for Muslims, and a call to Malaysia, but currently resides in an apartment in North Carolina.  She and her husband served in Malaysia already, now are in seminary, and then will return.  In this "meantime," I love to watch now they allow the Lord to lead and nurture their hearts for missions and others here --  she speaks with her neighbors, he brings Malaysian pastors to North Carolina, she runs to Walmart for needed friends, and he serves on the missions and mercy boards at church.  Both work to live financially responsibly and grow Jesus-knowing hearts in their two young girls.  Both living surrendered to the Called Life, in places and times, at present, today.

My friend Sheree does the same.  Calling women in the church for coffee or tea, meeting for meals or going for walks.  It seems every woman in the church knows her, but she's a little petite woman with a heart that bursts into your life, and somehow, she is the one who doesn't forget you!  She's called by Jesus to places like Ethiopia, but each day touches another woman's heart with Jesus in Charlotte.  She lives a Called Life through cards and phone calls and texts and tea.

I think of other women and men who I know like this -- Heidi, Bekah & Ryan, JD & Sandy...  Those whose "calling" they live today.  They open their homes, they let God wittle their hearts.  They spend their days and hours with intention, with direction, with conviction.  These are those with the Called Life I see.

And I wonder, what of we?  Do we live as missionaries here, or just for the someday when we "get there"?  Does our work and finances show our sense of responsibility to provide for ourselves, as well as for the ministry of others?  Does our time show our connection to those around us, giving faithfully to their hearts as well as ours, and searching ways to love "the least of these"?   Are we waiting and focused on "someday" rather than living as called by God today?

"Therefore, go and make disciplines of all nations..."