Grown-Up Things.

In an email from a friend this week, she listed off all the things she was getting done, from house-cleaning to Christmas shopping, and ended with "sometimes I just hate being a grown-up."  I could hear her sign and feel her slump.  Like the pen thrown down the page in surrender to the list of the demands of life.

I found myself casting loud echo with her statement.  Yet I would need to add my grumpy tone and sour scowl.  Fully knowing and aware that: my attitude stinks.  Somehow recently I've elevated myself above anything that could be considered a task, then given myself a Cinderella complex with pity party as I boar over the job.

I've lived on my own for twelve years, eight of those post college, but somehow my attitude, heart, and mind have twisted in the past year.  I've found myself prickling about grocery shopping, humphing about loads of laundry, sighing about vacuuming, snarling about meal-planning, and brewing about having to go to work.

The thing is, everyone does these things. All the Mercedes owners pump gas.  All my neighbors lug in their bags of groceries.  All my friends do piles of laundry.  All homeowners roll out the garbage.

I'd like to crawl back into my parents house and have my mom do all the "grown-up things" for me again.  But I can't.  I'm the grown-up.  I'm the one living the life.  I'm the one who also gets to do grown-up things like go out for dinner, sip wine with friends, take airplanes to far places, and attend the theater with my love.

I am a terrible grown-up.  I'm a grown-up praying for an attitude change.  I'm not there.  At all.  But I know God well enough to know he will put people in my life to train me as such, offer Truth in my dark spaces, and prune me so that I will have the grown-up attitude of a servant, to do my grown-up things in the Light of Christ.

"You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness."  Ephesians 4:22-24

"Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.  Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest but each of you to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus... taking on the very nature of a servant..."  Ephesians 2:1-7

Look Up.

Today, I am thankful for the sky.  For the perspective that it offered on my morning commute.  I've been churning a lot inside and looking at myself a lot.  And as I was driving, I cognitively told myself, "Look up!  Your God is bigger than you have made him out to be!"  And I looked up.  And I smiled.  Clouds smoldered with the morning grays and brought perspective in the vastness.  My God is so big. My life and thoughts and self are so small.  His wisdom, ability, sovereignty, and strength are only reflected in slight through that expanse of sky.  My God is so big; I just need to learn to look up.

Things I Didn't Know I Wanted.

I find myself wishing, envying.... everything.  Things I didn't even know I wanted.

I wanted to live in Africa, in a hut, ministering to the local women and children.

I wanted to be a mother, and have children who I loved and prayed and nurtured over in my home.

I wanted to be a friend, who sat with tea and cookies and listened and cared.

These are the things I wanted. These are the things my life geared toward, motioned into,  and fostered forward for.

But now I find myself in several months of looking and listening and hearing... and coveting.

I see houses so big and broad that they feel empty or boasting, now decorated in my head.

I notice cars that before seemed frivolous, now on my have-to-have list.

I see children and women and families dressed perfection, now idealized in my plan.

I live in South Charlotte.  I roam in circles of wealth and find their norm becoming my concept of common.  I gloat over their money, their families, their homes.  And paint it as my dreams aimed for reality.

Which then leaves me struggling, straining, and strangled.  Strangled by dreams that aren't mine.  Struggling against values that I don't hold.  Straining for wealth I won't attain.  Striving for things I didn't know I wanted, and I don't want.

The Flip Side.

I feel like I've been writing a lot of Eeyore-type posting, slightly ho-hum with a saddened bent to them.  So I'm trying to offer a bit of balance to those with a few pictures of what else is going on in life this fall...  of goodness.

 

 Labor Day weekend games with our family.

 Our new adventures: biking the greenways, near home, and getting outside...

 Of course:  fall brings USC

 Trips with friends: here at Lazy 5 with Daniel and Lauren

New BFFs (who went back to South Africa now): Kendra & Daniel.  

What fun we had so often with them!

When Family Lives Close.

When family lives close...

You stop byfor Saturday morning baking with niece and nephew.

When family lives close...

You call up Aunt Ruth for to schedule game night for two.

When family lives close...

You drop by Grandmas on a Sunday afternoon.

When family lives close...

You arrive on Aunt Pat's doorstep, hosting dinner for you.

When family lives close...

You boat with your siblings or take kids to the zoo.

When family lives close...

You meet parents for dinner, and Sunday lunch too.

When family lives close...

You have places and spaces

Always and immediately

Open to you.

You have hugs ever-waiting

And bonds ever-present

And people you love, who love you,

Close.

Oh how many days don't I wish that family lives close...

Prayer Works.

Trish and I read an incredible, instant classic last summer that melted itself into our heart and life.  A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller was intentional, narrative, poetic, simple, and profound all in one little blue wrapping.  But its impact on my life has far left the words scrolled on pages, and moreso imprinted itself in my world.

I was reminded of it last night, when my dear friend and Charlotte dad, J.D. Lawson was talking about prayers and tithing and money and philanthropy and hardship.  At a time in their life when tithing made the least 'sense', they started.  They were married and out of the military and now new Christians, when financially everything seemed to collapse.  But they felt called and convicted, so the giving began.

In the same season, he was alongside the road and his car broke down.  He was so angry he shoved the door open, smacked it closed, and hissed at the engine.   Then, in one movement he laid his hand on the engine and prayed over it, got back in the car and chugged away.  It wasn't until he stopped at the stop sign that he realized his car was even working.  And... prayer was working.

I left last nights table full of thanksgiving.  Thanksgiving for the comfort of the home of my Charlotte mom and dad, whose door is always open and in whose arms I can always find a hug.  Thanksgiving for the friendships that seem always available and open handed and happy and rejoicing in me.  And thanksgiving for the reminder that prayer does work, and God is involved in life, and Christians can encourage the faithful.

Thank you, JD, for being the faithful and encouraging me with your stories, and prayer.

Kingdom Work.

I've learned valuable lessons in the last three months, about time and space and life and work and meaning and play and calling and rest.  Because it all came in one bundle of thought, through struggle of experience:

Work is part of the kingdom.

I spent two and a half of the last three months without "work."  Without a schedule, a community, a need to arise and be productive in the morning.  And this turned into sloppy emotions, sloppy thoughts, sloppy behaviors.  Though there were things to be done, without a schedule or need to get to done that moment, I just fumbled and lost the ability to feel purpose and my place.

I dwelt on this in the moment, and especially at church, as we walk through the Old Testament this year.  And I land on Genesis One.

Work is Pre-Fall.

Work is created by God.  Only after the curse does it become laborious and long and tedious and exhausting.  But all things of God desire redemption.  Including work.

Work is created to give meaning, to satisfy, to create bountiful days, to create beauty, to sustain our hours.  Work can, and was intended, to bring relationship with others and our Lord.  It was created good.

As mornings roll around and I crave those few extra minutes in bed down before heading off to my out-of-home work, I am reminded of this lesson and given purpose.  In what I do each day, I am doing Kingdom Work.  I am being part of the Kingdom simply in working.  Especially when I work as for the Lord, and with a steadfast heart holding fast to him with grace.

Messy notes

When my mom died, I went through a long period of things in my brain not transpiring.  I couldn't think straight, plan meals, cook, or seem to make sense of the world around me.  My friend Kate came and stayed for 3 days in June and cooked and grocery shopped and listened to my whirlwind of everything that I couldn't place in my brain.

When I moved to Charlotte, I found the fall so difficult.  Everything was new and I was splattered in it -- new job, new house, new roommates, new grocery store, new church, new everything... And it felt so displaced.  Like - did my life really happen?  how did I end up here?  Is this me?  What is all this around me? Because nothing stayed the same (except Christ and my phone-call friends).

Its been two years now since that and I regained my footing and created a home and began to settle...

Now I'm back in this transition with 10 weeks without a schedule, friendships that seem to have faded, with lots of my energy trying oh so hard to make new ones, and this cloud of transition and waiting getting darker over my head.  I'm a woman that needs heart friends, that needs a schedule, that works best with a project underway... But right now I'm fumbling and just wishing I could somehow get back on that platform of steady -- I'm not even asking for green grasses -- just steady for a while...

So it makes me want to buy flights to send my friends here, so that I have them deeply in my world, and somehow convince them to move here.

Or sit down and ask my mom a million questions.  Literally a million -- like: how did she stay home all day? how did she organize her morning? what is so important about dusting each week? what does it mean to be a wife at the beginning? how did she survive when both her parents died?

So here I am in transitioning, wishing I could lean on her faith and her wisdom, and somehow find schedule and forward movement in order to regain my footing once again...

Messy Words on New.

When everything is new
You can't find your footing
When everything is unknown
You grasp harder
But find no familiar control.
Whenever thing is new
It seems to send a whirlwind

I wish everything weren't new.
I wish I lived near family
Where faces will recognize me
For thirty years
And hugs and memories
Are deeply held near.
They know, they understand,
They have walked the shifting sand.

When everything is new
I wish for my "old" friends.
For those of Charlotte 3 years
And college of 12 years.
For those who see the Big
Bad and Ugly,
But know you are more than this
Instance you're in.

When everything is new
You long for fimiliar
For faces and memories
And places and talks
And anything to make you feel
Known.
Not wind or tossed by the sea.

I long for something that is not new
New job, new schedule (or lack there of)
New husband, new "roommate"
New roles, new responsibilities
New season, new Bible Study
New friends (acquaintances really)
None of these are bad, and most blessings.

But in this season, so much has changed
That everything feels new
And leaves me wondering,
whirling
for the familiar
Because somehow the
Un-new
Makes me feel known.
Settled.
Rooted.
Okay.

A Foothold.

"Do not give the devil a foothold"  Ephesians 4:27

I was wrestling.  I mean wrestling.  Wrestling against myself, against my words, against my will, against my attitude, against my behavior.  Everything inside was a tangled mess of tight rubberbands waiting to snap.

It was Friday night.  I came back from helping set up for the Women's Kick Off Brunch at church.  What fun it was with the ladies!  And by the time I got home, I was angry and angst and fighting... myself.  The devil knew the Lord was going to use me, and so he grapsed for a foothold.

Bikes went in and out of the storage shed, Mark working away with me doubting and questioning and wanting to throw things.  I wanted to be mean, be angry, be what I felt inside.  But I didn't know why I felt the way I did, and I knew it wasn't him, so I tried my best to hide my turmoil, but I'm sure tension was still his intuition.

Saturday morning, much the same.  And all weekend was full of church emails and texts, and my (oh my shame!) grumbling...

The devil had a foothold.  He took one edge - turning me against myself, and then to my husband and my ministry, and coiled me in knots.

For the Lord was going to use my story to encourage and challenge others to pursue him.  And until sitting in the church pew Sunday morning, I didn't realize all my uncharted and unaimed against was only because of him.  Because he used his warfare weapons to gather footholds in my heart.

It was Saturday morning that a quick blurb video was shown of me talking about a sect of women's ministry, encouraging a flock.  It is this week that Bible Studies begin, and I facilitate/teach one at this church for the first time...  It's this week that the devil took a foothold to turn me against myself, and most of all, my (by meaning, His ministry with my physical presence) ministry.

"Do not give the devil a foothold" forces Ephesians 4:27.  So I clamor for armor, now that I can Label It Satan, and take my stand against the devil's schemes, without his foothold.