We Are Moving

Bittersweet.  Pleasure mingled with pain.  I think I am learning what this word means in way I never have before.  

We are moving from the sweet sweet town we have loved for the last 11 years. We’re moving to the sweet sweet town that molded us and sent us out into this amazing world.  We are returning home to Sikeston as people who have been loved by an amazing community of people in one of the most beautiful places on earth.  We have forever been marked and changed by this Valley.

Brent left his job with Meadow Heights Church in October.  He’ll tell you it was an amazing 10 years and that he loves the men he worked with deeply and that he loves the people he ministered to deeply.  He simply couldn’t ignore the whisper he knew was from God telling him it was time to do something different.  We will forever love Meadow Heights Church.  Meadow Heights is in our bones, it is part of us.  

In January something happened in our hearts.  For the first time, we let ourselves actually feel the longing we had to be near our family.  It is a desire that would well up in us at different times.  But our commitment to the church was simply a stronger force while Brent worked at the church.  When that changed, we eventually felt the flood of emotions and the longing to be with those people who have loved us unconditionally from afar.

At visits we watched Heidi cook with her grandmas.  We watched her climb trees in Granny’s yard and totally let her hair down with her Mimi.  We watched Heath come to fullest life with his cousin Sam and admire his cousin Nolan.  You could just feel the complete peace they had with their family.  Brent would linger in long talks with his grandpas and fit in like one of the guys with his uncles and cousins.  I wanted to just sit long with my grandma and hear all about her life and stay up til 10:30 with her to watch KFVS12.  

We let ourselves really feel the love of people from the church we grew up in and school system that shaped us.  In turn fell in love with our hometown and the longing to be there was clear.  It is a Good a place where Good things are happening.  We were ready to bring whatever Good we have to offer to that sweet town.

The bitter is the sheer and gut-wrenching pain we have gone through when we imagine walking away from Arcadia Valley as our home.  We are completely changed because of this place.  We have learned God in this Valley in a way we couldn’t have had we not been here.  We have learned Love and Grace and Truth and Hope.  

There was that time when these people practically built us a house when we got a little too ambitious and in over our heads.  And, the time they fed us for a month while I was on bedrest.  There were the fireflies in the yard and flashight tag, mud pie kitchen, lemonade stands, and water balloon wars with these kids from so many families and all ages. There were wrestling matches, hide n seek in the dark, dance parties, fashion shows, car tracks, ninja warrior courses, and muffin making with these sweet families.  And the Baptist Home. Oh the Baptist Home.  Visits with the residence.  Cards and crafts.  The pond.  So many lazy summer afternoons at the pond. And the best hill ever for sledding.  The countless adventures at Elephant Rocks. The best playground on earth.  

Sitting long with my momma friends while our pre-school kids played and discussed books and sleepless nights and kids.  Sitting long with teenage girls on my bed while we dissected life and God and purpose. Sitting long with people several generations older and soaking up their wisdom and perspective.  

And, the people of the school.  Oh my.  How you have embraced us and our kids. It has been an amazing place to work.  My children absolutely love this school.  They feel loved, valued, and smart all because of the way each of you have taken time to invest in them.  (In case anyone out there is wondering, Arcadia Valley Public School District is a truly amazing district full of dedicated, authentic, good people who are great at what they do).

Here in this Valley, our prejudices have been busted open.  Religion has been stripped away. We have lived sacrifice and simplicity.  We have lived with peace and hope.  We have grieved through pain and rejection and loss.  It has grown us.  You, people of this beautiful Valley have grown us.  We are forever grateful.  We did not deserve to be loved the way you have loved us.  

You were Christ to us.  

I pray that we can carry that on and be the same to others.  It is with many tears and so much love that we say thank you and good-bye.  We know more Good is to come in this Valley.

(We will be moving the first week of June)

Repentance, WHAT???

Heidi is 11 and is wanting to start texting on her iPod.  This whole technology thing is tough to navigate with kids (can I get an amen!).  In the counseling world, I have seen some really horrible things that come from kids not handling the freedoms that come with technology very well.  And let's be honest, some pretty horrible things come from adults too.  

We are trying to navigate that whole thing with our precious mostly innocent daughter.  One of our family phrases is, “With freedom comes responsibility.”  We try to celebrate growing up and the freedoms that come with it.  While also making a big deal about the responsibilities attached it. You’ll think we’re crazy but, for Heidi’s 5th birthday she got a cool new booster seat.  Ya know the ones that lift the child higher and just use a seat belt to buckle.  She was so stinking excited when she opened that seat.  We celebrated the freedom and “big girlness” of it while also explaining that it was now her responsibility to buckle her own seat belt.  We try to do something similar each year.  We get her a gift that brings freedom and responsibility.  Hence, the texting!  Ugh.

So we talked about how easy it is to get into a pickle when texting.  And how easy it is to hide stuff. Long story short, we decided that the responsibility attached to texting at this age is to not be secretive.  We came up with a little plan.  For a couple months she is going to practice not “hiding” things.  She wanted to feel like she was good at “keeping things in the light” so she could prove she could handle her new freedom.  (We got to talk about creating pathways in the brain and how we develop new habits and they’re really hard to do a first.  But, the more you make a rut in that spot in your brain, the better the habit gets.  I kind of love that stuff).

Heidi has been confessing all kinds of stuff.  None of it has been big stuff at all.  (She would be embarrassed if I told that stuff publicly, so I won’t.)  Something really interesting has been happening though.  Every time she tells us something new, we seem to get closer to each other. I have been careful to not make her feel guilty or condemn her when she confesses some little transgression she has kept to herself.  It’s clear as she tells me each thing that she has already punished herself and has a broken heart from it.  All she needs from me is the affirmation that I still love her and approve of her. That I am not ashamed of her at all, that I totally understand. Then I toss out a little piece of advice for the future.  (Listen, I get this mothering thing wrong a whole whole whole lot of the time.  I think this one is going right for the moment because there is a bigger lesson involved).

A couple weeks ago Brent and I did a lesson with our GoKids class at church about the prodigal son.  You know the story.  The younger brother gets restless and decides to go ahead and ask for his inheritance from his father.  He goes and blows it and messes up a whole lot.  He hits rock bottom when he is working in a pig pen starving and wanting to eat the pig slop.  He realizes just how dumb he has been.  He is broken.  He is sorry.  He has a heart of repentance.  This is the moment that he changes.  

He returns to his father hoping to just work as a servant.  Instead, his father embraces him.  He loves him, approves of him, doesn’t lecture him.  He throws a big party celebrating his return.

There is a part to this that I have missed for years!  And, it is solving one of the biggest confusions I have had about God and the Bible.

Most of my life I have been really confused by the whole “you’ll have to give an account for your life” thing in the Bible.  At some point in my childhood, I was taught that one day God would read off a list of all the bad things I had done and I would have to feel shame and guilt of each one.  I would have to tell him I’m sorry over and over before I could get into heaven.  So, I would try to remember every bad or wrong thing I did throughout the day and confess it so that maybe I wouldn’t have to re-confess in eternity one day.  

As I’ve gotten older and experienced God more and more and His Word, His Love, His Truth, something about that just didn’t make sense.  I know that God is Holy and that He is Truth and Justice.  I also now that He is Love and Grace and Hope.  

That Sunday morning, it hit me.  The reason why we confess our sins and repent is not to face the shame and guilt of it.  It is to face love and continued approval of our Father.  Confession and repentance is a key to fully understanding the Love of God.  His Love doesn’t change based on our actions.  It is through our brokenness that we are able to experience His Love and Goodness even more.

Jesus says, “Therefore, there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.”  NO… NONE… Hiding in our sin and shame only hurts us and pulls us away from Him.  We just stay in the pig pen even longer.  He knows our hearts.  He knows that we are already broken and yearning for what only He can give.  He gives us Unconditional Love, Approval, and Forgiveness.  And, He tosses out an important life lesson to help us move forward in the future empowered by His Truth and Redemption.

I find myself telling Him the simplest of slip-ups these days.  The Relationship that follows defies logic.  Maybe this is molding me to extend and accept the same Forgiveness to others in my life…  Maybe that is the new Freedom He is teaching me.

Yips: We All Get Them

Yips: We All Get Them

This week at lunch with some friends, they started talking about when athletes get the “yips.”  I had never heard of it.  Brent of course knew all about it (being a former college athlete… and still one heck of an athlete in my eyes).  He says it’s all in the player’s head.  They start focusing on the wrong thing.  Some people try to distract themselves.  But that makes it worse.  You just have to face it head on.  

So, what are the yips?  It’s when a player repeatedly makes drastic errors in everyday tasks.  Like when the catcher can’t get the ball to the pitcher over and over. He’ll throw it two feet in front of him, then fifty feet high, etc.  Here’s a clip of Rick Ankiel in 2000.  

People watching him can be judgmental.  The person on the receiving end has to deal with it. While also trying to keep things moving forward as the other team keeps advancing. Other teammates cringe in sympathy for their peers dealing with it. And, for the person it is happening to, it is extremely frustrating, confusing, and embarrassing.

This whole thing is fascinating to me. It reminds me so much of something Paul says in Scripture.

"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." Romans 7:15

(The whole passage is actually very profound about the nature of sin in our lives. It is challenging and thought provoking. I am no where near qualified to be an expert on it. But, it sure does change my heart when I reflect on it.) Back to Paul.

This guy is one the most impactful people in history.  He was an intelligent, wealthy, powerful guy who gave up everything to follow this Way of Jesus thing. He was a person of Truth, Hope, and Love to the world.  Yet even he had what sounds like the yips to me. He kept doing things he did not want to do. He got frustrated at this.

Have you ever done something over and over and gotten mad at yourself for doing it? Especially because you didn't even want to do it? Yep, I understand. I have had the yips before too.  Like holy makrel, why do I have three Starburst wrappers on my desk for the third time today?  No really, that’s not the type of yips Paul was talking about.  It’s those bad habits and wrong ways of thinking that seem to take over.  It’s those times when we feel like we have betrayed ourselves or like we don’t know who we are.  These times are different for all of us. But I think God allowed this to be in scripture, because all of His blessed human creation is going to have the yips at some point and we need to know that they don’t take us out of the game for good.

I don’t really have a resolution to this that has some nice tidy bow.  But, I do have some thoughts that make sense to me.

I see that Paul didn’t give up. Later in the passage, he makes some peace with his yips. He says, "So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Romans 7:25. Just like Brent said. It's a matter of focus. If we focus on God's Ways, we'll be freed from the yips. I'm encouraged to know that Paul went on to revolutionize the world with Truth, Light, and Love.

I think Rick Ankiel has been able to move on in life too.

A couple more thoughts on the yips...

Like in baseball, when we get the yips in life, there are people sitting in stands with their snacks watching. They will criticize, laugh, make fun, think that they would never do the same, or use it for their entertainment.  Have I been one of those people?  God, forgive me.

I sure would much rather be one of the fellow teammates who offers sympathy, acceptance, forgiveness, hope, and grace.  I hope I would be the one who would call a timeout and help get my friend out of the situation.  Then sit with her in the dugout as she deals with the confusion, shame, and frustration.  We’re all on the same team.  

And, when we’re the person with the yips, we need to call the timeout ourselves.  We need to ask for help. We need to face the hurdle in our mind whatever it may be.  Let's be careful though, not to be crippled with guilt and humiliation.  God is a God of conviction not condemnation.  He draws us to repentance not shame.  We can hold our heads high focusing on His Ways.

Why Did I Wait So Long

Why Did I Wait So Long

Right now I need a haircut way bad.  Heath needs a dentist appointment.  I’m on my last pair of contacts. I’m sure there’s something of Heidi’s I haven’t done that I don’t even know about yet.  And, I haven’t ran in over a month. Just keepin’ it real.

February kicked my rear. I got the flu. That led to a sinus infection. Which, was my first one ever.  I have to apologize to any you folks that I didn’t have sympathy for when you had a sinus infection. It really does feel like you’re dying and your head might explode.  (Well, maybe I am one of those people who can be a little dramatic when it comes to illness). Brent and I totally have role reversal with the whole sickness thing.  He is tough as nails and never complains. I’m pretty quiet in those conversations where women talk about how poorly their husbands handle sickness.

Back to the point.  So I was dying. Kind of.  One Sunday afternoon like 30 days (or just 14 days) into thing, I went to the doctor.  She started me on meds.  Within a couple hours of taking the steroid, I was a new person.  It was amazing.  I kept saying, “I can not believe I waited so long.”  Of course I repeated that over and over as I do most things I am excited about.  I told all my school peeps who were snotty and sick to get to the doctor.  And that, “You’ll being saying ‘Why did I wait so long?’”  

Then I started thinking about that phrase, “Why did I wait so long?” and started really meditating on it.  There is a whole lot to think about with that phrase.  

Have you seen the movie War Horse?  If you haven’t, you should.  I’m sure I’ll write about it one day.  It’s one of those story lines that just really speaks to me deeply.  Essentially, in life, there are times when you just have to put your head in the plow and do the hard things day after day.  They will grow you and shape you for your next season of life.  Actually, that hard thing could be the thing that saves you in the end.  It totally resonates with the Bible verse that gripped me as an 8th grader laying face down on my light green carpet.  

“Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds for the testing of your faith develops perseverance.” James 1:2 (weird verse for a 14 year old?).  This defined my life for years. Pain after pain, trial after trial. I clinged to the good that would come if I could persevere.  Point is, I tend to just accept hard things in life and even try to anticipate the good that will come eventually. I do believe suffering and trials are truly some of the absolute greatest gifts we are given in life (that's a-whole-nother story).

But what if that’s only half of the story? Clearly there are situations that we can make better, rather quickly even, if we’ll just take a steps to do so.  What else have I just accepted as a trial and am waiting too long to fix?

Like last week, Brent had our front door fixed that has been a problem for three years.  It took the dude a couple hours.  Do y'all know how many people I have had to yell at through the door, “One sec, I’m trying to get the door to open!  Now you push real hard while I pull!”  Or, "Hang on, go to the back door, I can’t get this one open!”  The mail people even learned to bring the packages to the back. Now we have so much freedom to just come and go and welcome people in without awkwardly yelling at them.  Why did we wait so long?

Maybe it's just something simple we need to do to make everyday life better.  Or, it can be a big decision that we put off.  Calls we avoid to make.  Saying a big fat NO to something good, so we can say yes to the best (that’s from Bryan Mills… gotta give credit where it’s due).  Or just saying a big fat NO to something because it’s the right thing to do and we don’t need to care so much about hurting someone’s feelings.  Saying yes to a dream or an adventure or a new start.  We only live once, ya know.  Maybe we need to do the hard thing and forgive. Work through some past pain?  Do we need to sit in the quiet and listen and reflect on scripture and let God inspire and prompt us?  Have you ever done that?  Ever waited way too long to slow and reflect and connect with God?  Then when you do, you have a renewed sense of purpose and perspective.  Let’s not wait so long.

That Ol' Tortoise

The tortoise and the hare keep making an appearance in my life!  God must be telling me something.  Heath is currently intrigued daily by a Mother Goose version of the story with a tortoise named Leonard and a hare named Skip.  For the moment, he is less fond of the LeapFrog version (It is so odd!  They fit the entire alphabet in… there’s a zebra, an umbrella, a city, and all kinds of other out of place things!)

I recently heard the quote, “We overestimate what we can accomplish in 5 weeks and underestimate what we can accomplish in 5 years.”  Isn’t that so true! 

Ol' Leonard understood that idea. He just kept going one slow step at a time.  One next right step after another.  It had to feel so defeating to watch others zoom right by.  And, when the wind was cold and the hills were steep, it had to be really hard for him to take that next right step. 

Last week I started to get overwhelmed.  I let my mind race and run with all the things that need to get done.  I dreamed of Pinterest things to do to our house.  I felt defeated after reading blogs of creative things moms did with their kids during the snow days.  I diagnosed half the world’s problems after reading journal articles for my class.  And when one of those “out of nowhere” problems popped up, I was a mess. 

Friday night, I laid my head down whispering to God.  “I feel like I’m drowning.”  I knew that none of this was crisis level stuff.  I was just off and my focus was wrong.  I closed my eyes and couldn’t see my way back.  I whispered it again.  Drowning. 

Saturday morning I opened up my little quiet time book.  On that very day the words were so perfect, “When you feel yourself sinking in the circumstances…”  The Scripture with it was the story of Peter walking on the water to Jesus. 

Peter stepped out of the boat in faith during a storm to be closer to Jesus.  I could relate.  When Peter looked away from Jesus, he saw the waves and he began to sink.  He cried out to Jesus to save him.   I got it.  I had been looking at the waves.  My focus was not where it should have been.  I was drowning.  Without His perspective, I only sink.  Trusting Him as I take one step after the other is the only way to truly go through the storm.    

That night, I got out my lesson for GoKids the next morning.  You’re not going to believe me, but it was the story of Peter walking on water.  It was all about trusting God. 

So, that ol’ tortoise has got it right.  One diligent, purposeful step after another.  Who knows where he’ll be in five years!   

Warm Pipes

It was 10:00 pm on the night we moved into our sweet new home.  It was the grand finale of a 30-day total house repair/remodel.  Brent and I were functioning on less-than-adequate amounts of sleep at that point.  Yes, we did pull all-nighters to hang new drywall and sand all the wood floors.  I went to brush my teeth in the brand spanking new vanity.  I turned the hot water on.  It sputtered and gasped.  I turned the cold water on.  It trickled.

It was a wopping 2 degrees outside.  I tried the tub.  Then the kitchen sink.  No luck.  I closed my eyes and took a deep breathe knowing I had to tell my worn out husband. 

Like a pro (or, rather an amazing man of faith and determination) he bundled up, got the blow dryer and headed to the crawl space.  He had plans of blow drying the pipes to unfreeze them.  I had the faucets on and ready for the water to gush.

10:30… 11:15…

I laid in bed recounting the past blur of a month.  The stories of God’s goodness and incredible blessings through this process were overwhelming.  

We set out with the mindset of viewing this house repair and remodel as an intense time of spiritual growth -- A mission trip of sorts.  We knew that there were much more important things going on in the world than the remodel of our new home.  We knew that people were starving and losing their jobs and facing illness and death.  

We didn’t, for one second, want to get so self-absorbed that we lost sight of what real problems are in life.  God had blessed us with this house and we wanted to see each hurdle as an opportunity not a problem.  We hoped this house would be a journey for us to hear God’s voice and obey Him in the small things.  We hoped to grow closer as a couple and as a family.  To be more grateful and to trust God with all things.

11:45… 12:15...

A little panic started to settle in.  Or was it fear and anger?  I wondered what would happen if the pipes burst.  And, I hated for Brent to have to keep working so hard on such little energy.  Would we have the money to fix this one?  Why was God allowing such a big problem like this now once we’ve moved in?  And, could anything just go smoothly?

Then, He whispered to me deep in my spirit.  Trust. I remembered.  He always provided.  All the days of my life, He has never left and never failed.  All hard things have only led me closer to Him and to understanding how He works in the world.  And, yes at that moment the rest of the world’s problems were still raging.  And God is a God of relationship and restoration and redemption.  Yes, this water problem was meant to draw us to Him.  Not to fret or control.  But to Trust.

I figured Brent was having his own “moment” under the house.

12:39…

The water came bursting in the tub and sink.  Relief washed over me and I went to meet Brent in the kitchen.  He'd been under there with the blow dryer for two and half hours.  He was bundled.  I was thankful.

Slow and calmly Brent said, “The water was turned off.  The valve was off."

Nope, the pipes weren’t frozen at all.  At some point in all of our repairs and leak fixes here and there, the main valve was still shut off.  But we sure did have a heart to heart with God and some warm pipes that night.

Do You Realize?

We recently went to the Museum of Transportation in St. Louis.  We had a great time.  It's a must-do if you have kids and live close enough.  We were most impressed with touring the old train engines and passenger cars.

I was amazed by how massive the engines were.  They were so huge that they felt fake.  Some of them had wheels larger than 6 feet tall.  Inside, we got to sit in the conductor's chair and see what driving the massive thing was like.  It looked like such a difficult, pressure filled job --only tiny windows to see ahead, the many levers and knobs, and the firebox inches away.

I wondered if the once-upon-a-time conductors knew their impact on the world.  Did they know they were literally leading the way to changing our country and even the world forever?  In their day in and day out hard work, did they realize they were revolutionizing life as they knew it?  Did they know that generations of tiny men-children (aka little boys) would pretend to be just like them?

I have missed out on the importance of those day in and day out things. What about you?

We tend to look only for the big leaps of faith.  We measure our lives by the immediate impact of our decisions.  Often, we only see the people in the world who are easily noticed and are making the most obvious impact.  We have a streak of jealousy that rears it's ugly head.  We fight feeling guilty for "failing" when compared to others.  We can't stand the thought of living a life that doesn't count in some way!

Well, I'm learning a whole lot from people like the old-time conductors.  It seems that many times the people with the biggest impact are behind the scenes doing the hard work day in and day out.  It can be such hard work.  It can take tremendous perseverance and self-sacrifice.  I write these words, hoping to encourage you.  If you are feeling like a failure or wondering what your impact really is, take heart!  

The everyday, unnoticed things you do truly are making a difference.  Living a life filled with His Love will literally lead the way to changing our world forever.  In your day in and day out hard- Love work, you are revolutionizing life as you know it.  Do you know that generations of tiny people (you know what I mean) will pretend to be just like you?  You are leaving a legacy.