A new Advent traditions?

This year we pretty much finished our serious Christmas shopping before Advent! Last year we were caught unawares, as if Christmas isn't December 25th every year, and were rushed and harried feeling. So we probably swung "too far" on the pendulum, but really, I like it a lot.

There are a few miscellaneous items we haven't picked up or boxed to send, but all the thinking is over. We've purchased or made things. We've used Amazon a lot which made shipping easier, and I really dislike browsing stores so avoiding that is good too.

While part of me enjoys the gift giving part itself, I really dislike the bombardment of messages to buy stuff for people. So with the shopping done, I can just ignore all the ads. Does not apply to me. I don''t need to wonder if so-and-so might REALLY like that whatsitmahoozer. Even if they did, too bad!!

And of course, being done before Advent means that I have more head space for other stuff. This week, it's been tending to two pretty sick kids. Grueling work. But they should be on the mend soon.

For the first time, we're putting up a Jesse Tree which is a Catholic tradition that I was not raised with. The Jesse Tree is a tree that is decorated with symbols recalling the fuller story of Christmas. It starts with God forming the universe and people, the break in relationships with people and the promise for full restoration, then it moves through major stories of the Old Testament before telling the New Testament story of Jesus birth. We're using a children's book by the same name and reading a story a day. I recycled our 2 ft tree from our apartment days, and we're making a felt ornament that corresponds with the symbol for the day. I'd much rather be doing this through Advent then worrying about what gifts to have for whom and how to get it to them.

So we'll see if we can make these new traditions: Christmas gifts in November, Jesse Tree decorating in December.

Crochet: learning something new

So I don't have any deep spiritual insights at the moment, I'm sort of in a "Jesus I'm desperate for you" funk.

But I've been having a lot of fun teaching myself to crochet. I started in November after spending many months thinking about getting my daughter slippers to keep her feet warm on the tile. But I didn't really want to spend money on that, and I saw a youtube video for crocheting maryjane slippers. I thought, "I can do that." So I bought a hook and took out some craft yarn I got on sale and voila! Slippers. However, Lil L being 2 means she often not only won't wear the slippers, she'll even pull off her socks. Oh, well.

I've gone on to making hats, baby booties, moccasins, a baby vest, and so on. It's been really fun to learn something new, but what I really like about it is having something to do with my hands while the kids play.

They have a mom-dar that beeps whenever I move out of range, like to the bathroom or the kitchen or the laundry room. Sometimes, I have to be in those spaces, but what they really like is for me to be in the living room while they play. I don't even have to play with them. I just need to be near. Crocheting is wonderfully portable. I have everything in a plastic shopping bag and can move from place to place.

It's also wonderful because it's pretty easy to stop and start. A couple times I've varnished or painted some furniture. These require multiple steps that are preferably done within a certain amount of time and away from small kids. That's really tough to do these days. With crochet, I can stop on a dime, drop everything back in the bag and do potty time or kiss a boo boo. Easy.

Another huge thing is that I'm making something. I have a bunch of yarn my aunt gave me when she heard I took up crocheting. I'm using it to make stuff for a baby in a family my small group is helping out this Christmas. Everything'll be yellow, but at least the baby will have something warm to wear. I'm already getting to the point where I can make my own designs and that's fun to think about. It's feels like magic going from a wad of yarn to a Thing. Love it.

If you'd like a hacked-together, crochetted something, leave a request in the comments.

This is just a phase

One thing about me that feeds my depressive tendencies is a bent toward thinking that the current state is the permanent state. In other words, all that is wrong with my life will always be that way.

One of the best things about having a second child is being able to be confident that everything is a phase. I feel like I should make a t-shirt that says "This is just a phase" or paint it on my walls, or something.

Something I've recently started to do is to nap with my 2 year old. She always* takes naps and I try to as well. Turns out she falls asleep faster if I lie down with her and I really enjoy that time with her. I know this is just a phase. She'll grow out of it soon enough.

DW is in a super charming phase. He smiles back when I smile at him; actually he beams. He's been army crawling and on our tile floor he's shooting around like a bat out of hell. Since he drags his body around, he's also mopping up his own spit up as he goes. I know this is just a phase. He'll be crawling properly soon enough and we'll have to make sure to watch the slippery spots on the floor.

As I mentioned last time, toilet training has been a drag. I know this is just a phase, but it feels like forever. When, O Lord, will she get it all in the toilet? And DW, while he sleeps better, when will the night feeds be over? I feel so close to a full night sleep and yet so far away. I know this is just a phase, but man it feels so long.

I've been thinking about the fruit of the Spirit lately. It's a list of qualities that the apostle Paul says results from letting the Spirit of God rule our lives rather than our own selves.

One of those qualities is patience, something I have been sorely lacking lately. I've been short with my children, my husband, with myself. It's been very, very hard to set aside "now-ness" and trust in a timeline other than my own.

Advent started yesterday and for many believers marks the beginning of the Christian calendar. It's a period of about four weeks of anticipating the birth of Jesus celebrated on Christmas. Early Christians were encouraged to fast during Advent like during Lent. This deprivation brought the anticipation to a visceral level.

It seems apropos to kick off Advent with a meditation on patience. What I love most about the notion of "fruit of the Spirit" is the implication and promise that the Spirit of God is the producer of the good characteristics. I want to be more patient. I want to be characterized by patience, but I cannot accomplish that, but God's Spirit in me can. And that is something I can anticipate hopefully.

Making stuff up as I go

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
~Paul's closing instructions to his friends in Thessalonica

I love these instructions because they seem so hopeful, so truth-full. But if there's one current life situation that I don't know how to be thankful for it's potty training and our 2 year old. I won't go into the gory details but it's one gigantic ARGH!!!! in my life. Frustration, despair, anger, shame, guilt, I've got it all.

But today, I'm going to make up a list of stuff to be thankful for about this situation.

My thanksgiving poop list:

1) I am thankful that my daughter has well-functioning excretory system.
2) I am thankful for disposable diapers that pull down easily when she does want to sit on the toilet.
3) I am thankful for toilets and modern sewage systems.
4) I am thankful for the bits and pieces she does get:

• "Poop goes in the toilet"
• Taking clean diapers to her teachers when she's soiled hers
• The times she does let someone know she needs to go

5) I am thankful for the cluttered poster of stickers that represent the times she has used the toilet

6) I am thankful she's only soiled the carpet once (or twice).

7) I am thankful for my mother's help getting her to the toilet when DW was a newborn.

8) I am thankful she's never had a UTI.

9) I am thankful for all the times my husband has cleaned her up, especially the morning of "the incident"

10) I am thankful for the opportunity to learn humility, patience, and gentleness*

As I said, I'm making this stuff up as I go. Mostly, I'm angry and bitter that this process is not done and over with. I hate poop, but I'm learning to be thankful.

*I'm a really slow learner

Thankful for the screams

I hate baby screams. My husband says I take them personally, so it's been a rough couple months with our infant son, although the past week has been a dramatically wonderful turn around. He hasn't been colicky; he just hasn't slept the way we expected him to be sleeping and our lack of sleep made, well, lots of things difficult. Among those things were being pleasant, grateful, and compassionate.

But yesterday I was talking to a mom whose 2 y.o. got a stomach bug so virulent that after a couple days she stopped walking. My similarly aged daughter darts around. It's hard to imagine her awake and not moving around (unless there's a TV on). But I remember when she was in the hospital in April and how lethargic she was as well. And this reminds me that as cranky as sleep deprivation made us, our son's crying was well within the healthy baby range.

Not only that, for a period, they were appropriate indicators that he wasn't getting enough milk. Now it took us a number of weeks to seek help and figure that out, but at least we had some kind of warning. How heart breaking would it be to have a weak, listless baby?

As we head into Thanksgiving week, I want to take a look at some of the things I've been bitter about and re-examine them. So first off, I want to be thankful for the cries of our son; instead of really mad that I'm not doing what I want to be doing which is usually sleeping or resting.

Redefining what counts

It's disorienting to be in new spaces; moving to a new place, moving to a new job, moving to a new stage in life. Having done all of those in the past 2 years, I've had a lot of time to be disoriented and to think about it.

A friend recently moved from East Africa to the States and discovered that her expert malaria-prevention skills are useless, kind of like my parallel-parking skills and my turning-left-on-red skills. Instead I've been boning up my navigating-the-medical-industrial-complex skills and taking-the-kid-to-preschool skills.

My sister-in-law is a newly minted mom and bemoans her days of "getting nothing done." Actually she and all moms do a lot, just none of it counts. It's a particularly hard adjustment if your previous life had easily identifiable to-do lists. She's a pharmacist and there are obvious pharmacist things to do and patients to not kill. I was a teacher and grad student. I had specific hoops to jump, lessons to deliver, and papers to grade.

The new mommy check list is woefully short: Keep baby alive and clean. When possible, rest and feed yourself. So I was very encouraged to read the exhortation to find "quiet ways to love and serve others without applause" That really sums up new motherhood, particularly for stay-at-home moms. There is tragically little applause and lots of demands.

However, the more I walk this Jesus journey the more I think this is the call to all Jesus followers. Flash and bang, shock and awe should be the exception not the rule. This is something I so value in my husband, his faithfulness in the ordinary. Actually, it can be irritating because his service can appear to be inflexible habit, but he's so consistent about it; doing the dishes, taking out the trash, closing up the house for the night, tending to our electronics, tending to the church electronics, tending to the neighbors' electronics and so forth.

My bent is to think that things you could proudly tell a stranger are the things that count; publications, projects, travels, etc. Changing diapers, burping babies, taking out trash, and fixing computers are not things you would discuss and do not count. And that's crap. All those hidden hours of love and service count, and they count in the eyes of the one who matters most, our Creator.

No regrets, you have been worth it

Dear Children,

I have been fairly public about this process of transitioning into motherhood. It's taken me a lot longer in my head to become a mother than it took for me to biologically become one. A big part of the process has been grieving the loss of my previous life and a change in my perspective and understanding of how my time should be spent. I think it's been important to document this journey because 1) there's this belief out there that becoming a mom is this easy, breezy, feel-good thing for everyone, and 2) there are two camps of thought on women and working. Some think work and children coexist well, and some thing work and children cannot coexist. Whichever way it is, there's an emotional cost that must be paid. These are the things I'm trying to document.

I worry, however, that you may believe that I regret your existence. Don't do that; you would be believing a lie. You won't remember these early years together, but let me tell you that I have not covered myself in glory. I have been selfish; I have been removed; I have been uninterested. But slowly, slowly, slowly, by the loving grace of God, with every nursing, every hug, every diaper, every song and every giggle, I am becoming less selfish, more connected, more attentive. You are already an irreplaceable part of my life.

I have deeply grieved the loss of opportunity to pursue a tenure-track professorship. You may be tempted to think that I would have rather taken that path. Even though I grieve that loss, I count it a privilege to be with you made possible because your father can support us on his own. It is precisely because you are so precious that I willingly give up something that I value dearly.

I have no regrets about these past two and a half years with you, L and half a year with you, DW. You each have been supremely worth it.

I love you both,

Mom

Too tired to (not) connect

It's been a rough six weeks. We are really tired, we've been really tired. It's Friday and like most Friday's recently we've just barely made it.

And most days around 7:30, 8 o'clock, the kids are in their beds and my husband and I look at each other, and we are totally beat. And a couple nights a week, we'll put in a DVD, snuggle up on the couch, and watch something fun. Yes, we're not eyeball to eyeball talking about deep issues, and yes, we're not even being silly and goofing off over a video game, and yes, it's not a dress up date, but that is us, a few quiet moments, resting together, and that's it. Apart from the general figuring out of how to keep our four lives going, this is how we're connecting.

Spiritually, my first thought is that I am way too tired to connect with Jesus. Not only do I have little time to myself, when I do have physical space, I have very little mental space. What I need is a couch and DVDs with Jesus. A little place to be safely exhausted yet with.

And as I ponder this, I realize that I'm way too tired to not connect with Jesus.

I don't have the how's figured out, but the following words of Jesus have come to mind.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
~The good news according to Matthew, chpt 11

Role Models

Avie Carlisle, Cindy Megginson, Lillian Froude, Grace Mutzabaugh.

I had the deep privilege of growing up with these women at a formative time in my life. They have this in common: loving Jesus, being single, doing adventurous kingdom work. And by adventurous, I mean foreign countries, dangerous diseases, lengthy travel, oppressive governments, ground breaking, Bible smuggling, church planting.

As a young teenager, I was very unsure what it meant to be a woman, but these women gave me hope that whatever it meant it could be cool. It could be cool and it wasn't dependent on being married. And it could be cool even though or because it was Jesus centered.

Two of these saints have passed away; the other two forge on. God bless them all.

Subversive Grace

Today is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy--you know, in case you live under a rock and didn't know.

I was living in Kazakhstan at the time, having arrived in country two weeks earlier to begin a year teaching English. My team was getting ready to give placement exams that week. I was in my flat and around 10PM a neighbor came down to tell us that some plane had flown into some building. I imagined a confused Cessna. We didn't have cable hooked up at the time and being new in country, US news wasn't really on the forefront of my mind.

Then an American expat called. We had met him the first day in town and it turned out he was the US embassy liaison. The embassy was 20 hrs away by train. Apparently, it wasn't a Cessna and it was a big deal. It was an attack and we were told to lay low. The embassy later emailed us instructions to change up our route to work and to continue to lay low. Except that there were only 50 odd Americans in town and we lived on the outskirts with only one road into work. So yea, not really going to be able to change up our route. I mean, this side of the street or that side of the street isn't really a big change. And how low can you lay when you're clearly foreign. Actually, I was the least foreign looking of my team--heh.

I was politically neutral then, raised Republican, but skeptical of their intentions toward minorities. After Kazakhstan, I moved to Los Angeles and started grad school. This pretty much ensured a leftward movement in my politics, but eventually the strident polemics of my colleagues pushed me rightward again.

But today, 10 years later, as I reflect on how I've been making sense of the world beyond my immediate circle of life, it is clear that politics as it is being played out in the soundbites in the media has nothing to offer. Jesus subverts it all. Jesus is not a Republican, and Jesus is not a Democrat. I think God-fearing people really need to let that sink into the marrow of their bones. Bush was never the end of the world, nor is Obama. Really.

This is what Jesus said about himself: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (The gospel of Mark, chpt 10)" That's not a liberal agenda; it's not a conservative agenda. That's the Jesus agenda, rescuing people from darkness and ugliness and offering peace and beauty in the kingdom of God.

10 years later, I find that on facebook the apolitical friendships I had in college have been tainted with a hard crust of partisanship--Republicans are reprehensible. Democrats are evil. Whee, Obama won!! Yay! Osama is dead.

The Jesus call is to "act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with [our] God." These words were written collectively to the nation of Israel, but to carry it out would require the heart of individuals to change. As we interact with people and institutions, as we carry about our business, this is the grid we should be pushing everything through. Am I acting justly? Do I have an opportunity to extend mercy? Does my conduct reflect the reality that the Almighty God is near?

"On earth as it is in heaven" is a line from the Lord's Prayer. When our lives are characterized by justice and mercy and humbly living with God, we become part of extending the reign of the kingdom of God on earth. In the wild chaos of our current "Great Recession", Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the only way and his way doesn't look like the ways we understand or are comfortable with.

Book Review: Shepherding a Child's Heart

Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp, Shepherd Press, 1995. 215 pp. including scripture index.

Who should read this book
--Christian parents who like being told what to do and the 90s era culture wars.
--Thinking Christian parents willing to sift for nuggets of wisdom while dumping the junk

About the Book
This book comes in two parts. The first part is Foundations for Biblical Childbearing which is covered in 12 chapters with a summary chapter. The foundational principles cover topics like a child's spiritual development, the role of parents, the goals parents may have, and biblical methods including communication, "the rod", and an appeal to the conscience. The second part is Shepherding Through the Stages of Childhood which is six chapters covering three developmental stages: infancy, childhood, and teenagers. For each stage there is a chapter on training objectives and then one on training procedures.

There is an introduction that precedes all of this that seems very important to Tripp's ideas. As someone who frequently skims or skips introductions, it would have made sense to me for that material to be put in an actual chapter.

Chapters are typically not very long and have a half to full page of application questions at the end. The writing style of the book drove me bonkers having a tone of certainty and moral imperative that I find overbearing and misplaced. Words and phrases like "must", "hand-to-hand combat [for]...the child's heart," "The result is obvious," act like fingernails down blackboards for me.

Thoughts: The good
There are some principles in the book that I agreed with. The first is the premise on which the title is built, that is that the issue is the heart over behavior. The annoying, dangerous, correction-inviting behavior I witness in my children is an outflow of what is in their hearts.

Second, loving parents will discipline their children. We see that in Hebrews 12 and I agree with Tripp on this.

Third, listening to our children is equally important to speaking to them.

Thoughts: The ugly
I don't think there are overtly bad ideas in this book, but I do feel a lot of ideas are really awkwardly or weirdly presented. For example, on the one hand, Tripp writes that parents shouldn't think deterministically that anything we do produces automatic guaranteed results. However, a lot of his rhetoric implies that our children's lives are at stake vis-a-vis precisely what we as parents are doing. There's an underlying theme of fear in the book that I object to, an implication that if we do not raise our children the way Tripp recommends that the very souls of our children are at stake. And that's just not true. As parents, I believe we do have responsibilities that God holds us accountable for, but children have their own responsibilities and choices to make. And I think Tripp would agree, but he is unclear and inconsistent about this in the book.

Perhaps as a conversation analyst I am overly sensitive to this, but the dialogues in the book are really awkward to my ear. They are weird structurally but also in content. Here's the central example that bugs me:

-You didn't obey Daddy, did you?
-No.
-Do you remember what God says Daddy must do if you disobey?
-Spank me?
-That's right. I must spank you. If I don't, then I would be disobeying God. You and I would both be wrong. That would not be good for you or for me, would it?
-No.

To my ear, this sounds coercive, like God is coercing Daddy to spank and Daddy has no choice in the matter. As a kid, I would either hate God or my dad.

Putting aside the dialogue, spanking gets a lot of air time in this book. I am not an opponent to spanking although I did think that my parents' version of time out was extremely memorable and formative. (We had to stand in the corner holding our ears and squatting as if sitting on an invisible chair.) But Tripp sees spanking as rescuing our children from danger. So parenting isn't deterministic, but spanking rescues our children? Sigh.

Conclusion
Obviously, I really struggled with this book. I read it because a number of people recommended it and there are definite take away principles worth remembering. However, it was written in the early 90s and it has that vibe of fear and war with the surrounding culture. I would personally recommend reading something else unless you like wading through that stuff.

Book Review: Gakken Let's Create

Gakken Let's Create ages 2-4 yrs. 191pp, plus 4 pages of stickers and a "wipe clean board".

Who would like this book
--Parents of 2-4 year old children who want short, structured activities to do with their child
--Children who can sit still for 30 sec to 5 minutes, can grasp a crayon, and manipulate scissors

About the book
This is a workbook that introduces "educated world" skills, the kinds of skills that are useful for making teachers happy in school. (Parents may or may not think these are skills their 2-4 year old need to acquire at the moment.) The opening pages introduce drawing dots, straight lines, and curves; another section works on numbers 1-3. A final section combines life knowledge with cutting and pasting. This is an interesting section which offers opportunities to talk about animals, social customs, transportation, food, clothing, and school activities.

Thoughts and commentary
I got this book from Costco because it was inexpensive at $8 and because my daughter was newly out of preschool for the summer and I wanted something structured to do with her as I faced a big shift in our schedules. At the start of things, she was 2 years and 2 months old and young for the stated age range.

She really likes the activity book because there is a space for a "Good Job" sticker on every page. She also likes the graphics which are colorful and cheerful in an Asian cartoon style. Some of the pages call for using crayons, provided stickers, or scissors and glue. She likes all of those modes of interaction, but stickers most of all. As a parent, I like having simple pages to do with her, all in one place, with a bit of guidance on each page. I like the progression in difficulty and the variety of activities.

Cognitively, my daughter is a bit young for most of the book. It takes a lot of scaffolding to get through the activities. By scaffolding, I mean talking through the activity in advance and demonstrating what is going on. During the activity, she needs a lot of often literal hand holding. In the numbers section of the book, we did about a quarter of it before it was really beyond her ability to comprehend. I have currently stopped that section and will pick up later as she gets more comfortable with those concepts. Attention wise, she cannot pay attention for more than a few minutes. In the early part of the book, we could do a few pages in a session. But for cutting and pasting pages, 1 activity is about the limit. Mechanically, she needs help for everything other than putting stickers in place.

The build quality of the book is excellent. The paper is nice and thick. The icons are easy to understand. The short parent instructions are generally helpful. My only complaint here is that in the first section on drawing lines and shapes the gutter of the book gets in the way. The pages are not perforated, but I tore them out anyways so that she would have a flat page to work on. The wipe clean board is a black and white outline of a cake. I didn't see the point of it much, and we haven't used it much thus far. I cut that page out, again, because it is unwieldy to draw on while still attached.

Conclusion
Given that she enjoys the activities, I think that working a bit ahead of her abilities is fine. Sometimes frustrating for me because I like things lined up and tidy, but she's having a ball. And we have something to do together. However, I don't think these are particularly important skills for a 2 year old to pick up. Content-wise, I think I'd care more as she gets closer to actually starting school in a few years.

I'd be interested to see how she does with the same material next summer. And for that reason, I'm tempted to pick another one up for an apples-to-apples comparison.

When you feel you don't fit in

Dear Children,

While it is on my mind, I thought I would address something I hope you will not have to encounter for another decade. I think most people at some point in their life feel they do not fit in. By virtue of your family history, you will actually not fit in. While there are more and more families with parents of different ethnicities, most of your classmates will not be in this situation. Certainly, we as your parents were not. But we both did grow up in a home culture that was different from the surrounding culture. And it is from that experience that I want to offer two truths that can be lifelines as you navigate these tricky waters for yourself.

1) God did not make a mistake when he made you.
2) You have an invitation to belong to God's household.

God did not make a mistake when he made you
As a young person, I often felt like a cosmic oops, that God had been distracted when he made me and that's how I ended up being a girl born to Chinese parents in the American South. Like wouldn't it have been easier if I had been born Chinese in China or White in America? Growing up, in the US I was never American enough, and in Chinese countries, I was never Chinese enough. You may feel similarly.

But something that helped me a lot was a chapel when I was in 6th grade where the speaker said, "God does not make mistakes." I don't remember the verse she was speaking on, but here is one to offer you food for thought:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
~Psalm 139

The image here is one of God taking great care in crafting a life. God picked out your eye color, hair, nose, and mouth. And he built them on the genetic differences between Asians and Caucasians. Likewise, he knew you would have a particular cultural environment and has plans for that. Your ethnic background is not a cosmic mistake.

You have an invitation to belong to God's household
In your everyday life, you may feel like you don't fit in, you may be told you don't fit in, and you may actually not fit in. That's an awful feeling, I know. But this verse was huge for me when I was processing all of this. Listen to this:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household,
~Paul's letter to the Ephesians

When you accept that Jesus's death and resurrection was for your sin too, you get a new citizenship and a new family. The spiritual reality is that God sweeps you into his family and loves you perfectly just as he made you. You have a place to belong. And this is true even if there are people actively telling you that you don't belong. And this is true even if the people telling you you don't belong are people who say they are Christ followers.

Now, I hope that you have a few friends who are also hapa. That y'all laugh about the weird, awkward things that come with it. And I hope you have Uncle Jonny and Uncle Kevin around to show you the ropes. But iffn you don't, I think these truths can carry you a long way.

I love you,
Mom

Book Review: Introverts in the Church

I've been reading lately, so I thought I'd do some reviewing.

First up Introverts in the Church: Finding our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam S. McHugh, IVP. 222pp including discussion questions, further reading, and notes*

Who should read this book
Introverted pastors or lay leaders who feel like they are always out of steam or lagging behind.
Average Joe introverts who find many church ways alienating and difficult to connect with.
Extroverted pastors or lay leaders who have an uneasy feeling that some people are being sinfully anti-social.

About the book
The book starts off arguing that we live in an extroverted culture that prizes those abilities that come naturally to extroverts. Then it discusses characteristics of introverts, affirms those characteristics and then in response to the extroverted culture, calls introverts to healing.

McHugh covers a number of different aspects of introverted spirituality, from private devotions to community relationships to evangelism to church service. However, clearly the McHugh's heart is for introverted church leaders specifically pastors.

Thoughts and commentary
Well, turns out that I'm not the target audience for this book even though I am an introvert and a member of the church universal and a local church. I'm not the target audience first because I have embraced being an introvert. I have spent the better part of a decade and a half thinking about and working out how to be an introverted follower of Christ. I have no problems telling extroverted pastors to pound sand. I'm also not the target audience because I am not and do not desire to be a pastor. You can just tell that the pastorate is what jazzes McHugh. That's fine, that's just not me.

I was interested in the introverted spirituality chapters and I think these are the chapters that would interest the average Joe introvert in the church. The chapter on evangelism was particularly good.

Despite both being introverts, my husband and I didn't completely connect with some of McHugh's experiences as an introvert, nor do we completely connect with one another. And while McHugh does mention this, I think it must be stressed that introversion isn't the only reason a person responds in a particular way. There's a lot of diversity across introverts. For example, in the chapter on introverted evangelism he encourages introverts to leverage listening well to people to connect with people and walk with them on their faith journey. First, just because an introvert isn't talking doesn't mean that they are listening. They might be talking to themselves. Second, everyone including extroverts should work to listen better.

Conclusion
I was personally disappointed in the book because of the various points of disconnect. However, I am tempted to buy a bunch of copies and give them to various leaders in my life. Heh. Introverts new to this stuff--sure, check it out from the library.

*Not an affiliate link

Fact Family, Faith Family

Yesterday, I asked in passing what the unit for capacitance was fully expecting my husband would know. He did; it's the farad.

We are a fact-y kind of family. We like numbers, trivia, and random details that tend to fall in the nerd/geek realm. This is the environment our children are being raised in. Whether they pick up on this themselves in unpredictable, but they will know that some people, their parents specifically, play with these sort of ideas and trivia. I guess in other families it might be baseball or music which have the advantage of being more mainstream.

We're fact-y, but are we faith-y? Do I have equal confidence that our children will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their parents love and trust God? We don't tell them we're nerds; we just are. Do we need to tell them we follow Jesus, or is that also simply part of who we are?

In case it isn't obvious, I'm in a phase where I'm thinking and reading and praying about what it means to "parent toward the cross". Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (The good news according to Luke, chpt 9). This saying is hard and fights against my sense of self-importance, but I have found following Jesus to be deeply life giving.

I want our children to not just enjoy facts about the world or even facts about the Bible. I want them to experience living water that comes from Jesus through his death and resurrection through taking up their own crosses and following Him. What will they learn from how we live?

Stewarding what we have: Children

I have occasionally written about stewarding what we have and have always considered financial resources. But recently our daughter had another asthma attack that got so bad so quickly, I really feared for her life. It was a complete wide-eyed-mom moment at the medical check-in counter with a "Dear Jesus help them help my baby." She's fine now, but the incident brought me face to face with the mortality of our children.

As I've documented on this blog, I was slow to warm up to being a mom, but two years in, I'm all in. I am in the guts of mother-child relationships. Bowels might be more appropriate since this week we're back to potty training. This stage of parenting is so physical. There's a lot of hands on wrangling which inhibits abstraction. The diaper is wet or it's not. The spit up stinks or it doesn't. The plate of food is going in the stomach or on the floor or in the hair. Tickles result in full throttle laughter. Items are banged, slammed, and torn. I think this close physicality made me forget how thin the line between life and death is.

Being awakened to that reminds me that whether I spend a few more days and weeks with my kids or decades, their whole existence from before time into eternity is wrapped in the hands of God. In our overlapping time, however long that may be, I've been entrusted to take care of them as beloved children of God. On the one hand, this means that we've a much higher calling than to make sure they stay alive and learn not to be embarrassments to the family. And on the other hand, this means that God is particularly interested in each of them and active in their care and nurture so we don't have to bear the burden in our own strength and wisdom.

So the first step in parenting toward the cross is to remember that God is the ultimate creator and designer of these little lives. It's not about us creating our own little kingdom and our own family name. It's about realizing that like money, our children have been entrusted to our care for a short while.

Smiles

I'd say that I'm out of the physically miserable part of newborn care--the phase of truly wretched sleep deficiency, engorgement, and gas-induced baby wails. This happens to coincide with magnificent smiles from little DW. He beams from the core of his being. It's fabulous and frequent. So while there are plenty of bumps and humps in family life right now, this is one thing I'm really enjoying.

On clothing--Apropos nothing

Timed well with On Expecting's post on body image I suppose.

I finally went through my dresser and pulled out the winter clothes and the maternity clothes! Woohoo. I surprisingly fit back into my pre-maternity unmentionables which feels like a huge win, so I put the maternity ones away too. I also thinned out my closet of old stuff and stuff that never fit well.

At this point I have about three-and-a-half sizes of clothes. Maternity stuff for when I'm huge; big stuff for when I'm bigger than normal but not huge; normal stuff; and skinny stuff. There's not a ton of skinny stuff but I have a few items from when I inadvertently lost a lot of weight before my wedding. I'm currently wearing big stuff, but they are starting to be noticeably big. So I think I'll soon be back into my normal stuff. Hooray!!

Since things have calmed down with the baby, I'm willing to consider a third kid and I haven't got rid of all the big and maternity stuff. However, that'll be it's own day when all that stuff finally goes to goodwill.

I found a lot of t-shirts from college that I have a hard time parting with. And it reminds me that I need to "grow up" with regards to my clothing. And I fear that I'll go from a slouchy grad student right into a sloppy housewife. I definitely dressed better when I was teaching, so I'm trying to figure out where to land at this point.

I would like to eventually have a minimalist wardrobe of classic, quality clothing for summer and fall/spring--the two primary seasons here. But there are several obstacles: 1) a deficient fashion sense 2) a loathing of shopping 3) an aversion to spending money and 4) an unstable body size and shape. Currently, I'm using #4 as an excuse to not figure out ways around #1-3.

Anyways, we'll see. Right now I'll just revel in the prospect of fitting back into my old jeans soon.

Reflections on existential angst

I am dealing with a bout of existential angst. Basically, I'm realizing that whether we try to have a third kid is a big deal to me in a who-am-I way. Part of it is that I still have dreams of becoming a professor and there's a study out that found very few women with 3 kids in academia. And trust me, I get it. If we have a third kid, I am probably harming my potential to get a tenure track job in a big way. (Arguably, being geographically inflexible is equally or more harmful.)

So I've been pondering what is the big deal about getting a job, particularly since my husband provides handsomely for our family?

In no particular order:
1) What I do is fun for me. I like both teaching and research. I whine and moan about aspects of both, but at the end of the day I enjoy them. Part of the fun has been the people. I have worked with fantastic people and on fun projects.

2) I have been heavily invested in. I've been given a lot of money and time by various institutions and people who think I have a particular ability to contribute to society in this way. While they invested with no strings attached--I don't contractually owe anyone anything, I feel a responsibility to this investment similar to the parable of the talents.

3) I like "unlocking achievements". I'm told in video games that when you do enough of X, you "unlock an achievement". Seems like a fancy system of getting enough stickers to turn in for a bigger prize. Whether it's training from being a student most of my life or my bent, I like getting feedback that I'm doing the right thing, that I'm doing well. I've unlocked quite a number of achievements so far, but I have a few big ones left undone like getting a job, publishing in journals, and getting tenure. A teaching award would be icing on the cake.

Let us contrast this with being a stay at home mom.

1) I don't like a lot of things that go with motherhood. These include things like being physically miserable, dealing with someone else's body fluids, and a host of things that fall under "not being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it."

2) I have very little idea what I'm doing. Where professionally, I had an advisor who showed me the way and colleagues to work with, I feel fairly alone in this motherhood thing. Not completely, but I certainly don't feel as engaged as I was professionally.

3) There are no mommy merit badges. I want my merit badge for changing 2500 diapers, for taking all the night shifts, for nursing through mastitis, for not screaming or crying when I actually feel bonkers inside. As far as I can tell, there aren't real mom metrics. Your kid is alive still, clothed, and unabused. You're a mom. Yay.

With a comparison like this, it's easy to feel all sorts of negative things. Yet I as I review these sentiments, I am struck by how I have a special opportunity to live by faith and continue to be formed in Christ. I have been reflecting on how a theme in the story of Jesus is that he served individuals and humanity. The king of the universe became a servant. If I say, "I'm on his team," and I do, then my life should look like that too. While part of me resents the unheralded service my life has been "reduced to," I also recognize that the is an opportunity to live in the grace I've been given. And while part of me worries that my career is slipping away from me, I have the opportunity to trust that God is actively interested in my particular life and will take care of me. To top it all off, I have the opportunity to learn all this with a great family. My husband is a great husband and father and my kids are people I'm enjoying getting to know. While my angst is what it is, I have to acknowledge that I am living in grace abounding.

Weakness as gift

My mom is visiting her mom after having spent 5 weeks with us as we welcomed baby DW into our lives. So this week is the first time we've been left truly alone with our kiddos. One thing I've enjoyed is all the cuddle time with both my children. L, who has always been very independent, has wanted and enjoyed hugs and kisses more in this time of transition. And DW just patently prefers being held to pretty much anything else at this point. And I'm happy to accommodate.

But I was thinking back to my early 20s when I did a fair amount of living overseas for months at a time. This was pre-skype, pre-convenient email. And I suffered from intense bouts of loneliness. It did not help that I traveled to countries with little sunlight and lots of foul weather. During one of those trips, I read the book Five Love Languages. This book proposes that different people have different love languages and if you try to "speak" a language that another doesn't understand, they won't see your actions as love. The "languages" were quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch and receiving gifts. Quality time and physical touch resonated with me as languages I understood.

But there I was, on some distant continent, far from people I cared about and I wanted to throw a bat through a window. It seemed extremely unfair to have physical touch be a love language when I was extremely single. At the time, I had never dated anyone and would not have known how even if the opportunity presented itself to me. And then there was the whole deal about how God designed sex for marriage and man, if dating felt far off for me, marriage really felt far off. Basically, I felt cursed to have an empty love tank. Ultimately, living a healthy life in my body would be a struggle the rest of my singleness. It was something I managed by God's grace--I took up more athletic endeavors in my mid-20s--with alternating bouts of peace and torment.

Now, I'm writing this as my newborn sleeps in my lap. Those days seem very far off. As the mother of young ones, I'm constantly touching and being touched. Books sometimes warn parents that moms can be worn out from constant touching and want alone time away from her husband. Maybe it will come to that someday, but that day certainly hasn't come yet for me. I love the sweetness of our current phase. My daughter will sit in my lap and rest her head on me while describing the most mundane realities of life. "Daddy blue eyes,""Baby DW sleeping,""Red bowl,""Blue shirt,""Stacky blocks all-fall-down." My son loves being held and petted. I could do without the wailing parts, but really the rest is great.

What once seemed like a curse has now become a gift. I have hugs for my kids all day and when my husband gets home I've got plenty more snuggles left for him too.

A moment of public grieving

NB: The following is not a complaint. I'm not asking for accommodation nor am I wishing for a different life.

While my day to day life in the past 18 months has been decidedly domestic, I am a linguist* by training. Today, I received an announcement for a conference workshop that is right up my alley. I have work I'd love to present there and get feedback on. I'd probably even be interested in the other presentations offered. Exciting stuff on the order of magnitude of being a U2 fan and getting a backstage pass--VERY EXCITING.

SO NOT GOING. The conference is in Australia. I don't think we budgeted for Australia this year. Then, it's in December of this year. As in, one month after a requisite family flight to my cousin's wedding. As in, I'll have a still-nursing, 8-month-old son.

What a bummer. I love my cousin; I love my children; my husband makes good money. I'm still sad that I can't even think of participating in this.

Ok. That's off my chest. Back to playing with the kids.

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*Linguists are not necessarily grammar, spelling, and punctuation freaks--at least I'm not.

Grace offensively

My facebook feed has been filled with an surprising number of Christians who appear to be defending a glee-filled response to the killing of Osama bin Laden. That feeling is something I can't connect with, and I've been reflecting on why that is. I think it's because I've been thinking about God's grace lately.

I recently read Zahl's Grace in Practice: A theology of everyday life. One of the points he stresses is humanity's original sin and how close each of us is to total depravity. It's from that state that God rescues us by having a perfect Jesus pay what we owed. Jesus died for Osama bin Laden. We might not be able to forgive him, but the Jesus I know was willing to die a death powerful enough to provide forgiveness to bin Laden. That's how big God's grace is.

And while I have never and don't plan to actively participate in killing people, Jesus made anger equivalent to murder in Matthew 5. So while justice demands that bin Laden pay for the deaths he caused, justice demands that I pay for the murders I've committed too. That's how sin works. It universally evens the playing field; Zahl describes it as the even distribution of sin. Before a holy and perfect God, no one is more or less sinful. We're all just sinners; none of whom should be anywhere close to what is holy and perfect.

I think that the notion of justice is what is attractive about the death of Osama bin Laden and perhaps the notion of retribution. However, Jesus as I understand him is about grace that offends justice. So when I think about how God saw bin Laden, I don't think God was disgusted or offended by him. I believe that until the moment bin Laden died, God was wanting him to come home the way the prodigal son's father wanted to see a wayward child come home. While I doubt that bin Laden ever did accept Jesus's death as payment for his own judgment, this does not make me happy or want to run out into the streets.

Happy Easter!!

Our family is having our second child in the next bit, so I'll be on bloggy hiatus. I didn't, however, want to miss the opportunity to wish people a HAPPY EASTER!! He is risen!!

Why doing less grates

If you'll remember, I was initially dismissive of my husband's call to do less. But I think I realized why I felt the idea stank when I first heard it.

First of all, I have typically been rewarded for doing more. It brings me glory and recognition. As I mentioned previously, in high school, I "did more" and I won big time. I was an academic rock star, and I was lonely and miserable and I had heard that Jesus offered living water but there was none for me. At college, I said, "Screw doing more. Where's the living water?" God, in his grace, brought a group of people around me that loved me despite being a basket case, apart from the lauds and laurels the university had for me.

However, in terms of kingdom living, I've been taught since I was a child that there is kingdom work to do:

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
~Jesus' words to his disciples, the good news according to Matthew, chpt 9

I've always understood this to mean, "Hey, stop lazing around and DO stuff! Can't you see there's more work than we could ever possibly finish? Hop to it!" But this week, a passage that the Sunday sermon focused on talked about what God does and where real glory belongs:

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
~Paul's letter to believers in Ephesus, chpt 3

But that's kind of the point, there is more work than I could ever do, but God is able to do immeasurably more than I could even ask or imagine and it brings him glory to do it.

The idea of doing less grates for me because it takes the focus off of what I can accomplish and requires me to trust that God is going to pull through. Doing less requires me to ask God, "Well, what do you want me to do?" and to listen and obey even if I don't know how that's going to get me/the kingdom/my family/my career all the way from point A to point B. To me, doing less feels like doing half way. More is better. If I'm not exhausted and miserable, I must not be doing enough. But again, that's the point, I can never "do enough"; God is the primary doer and he does more than enough. Doing less acknowledges this.

Do diligently: Lessons from my husband

As butter noted in the previous post the quiet life is not an inactive life. I completely agree, and if you hung around our house, you'd experience a certain hum. For our family "do less" is about the pitch of the hum. It's about being deliberate instead of getting swept into a panicked frenzy or taut exhaustion.

I write about "doing less" because I'm a recovering "do more" person. As in, I've spent the past 14 years since graduating from high school trying to figure out what is doing for doing sake and what is actually worth doing. In high school, I figured that doing more stuff added lines to the resume which made getting into college more likely. So I did that, and I was rewarded handsomely--I got a scholarship to a top-10 university. I was also totally miserable.

One thing I really admire about my husband N is that he is extremely diligent in what he does. A fair amount of this may be his personality and he may be focused to a fault at times, but since that trait is not my strong suit I'm totally wow-ed.

By profession and interest, N is a programmer. This is not like saying so-and-so is a lawyer or such-and-such is a fireman. N has been programming since he was 8. Other than eating and tying my shoes, I don't know what I've been doing since I was 8. And I know no one starts lawyering or fighting fires at 8. When it comes to programming, his basic MO is "make it work." When he can't make it work, he gets really frustrated. Now this might sound very normal, but think about all the worker bees around the world who are just punching the clock. They go to work and all they want to do is to survive to the end of the day doing enough to not get fired.

While promotions and raises are nice, really what N wants is for the thing to work right. This desire is so strong that his personal hobby time is devoted to fixing a video game that is 10 years old that a couple hundred people in the world might still play. He doesn't get paid for this, and in fact, one of the current players cussed him out in a Hitler parody video.

Well, if you're anything like me, N's diligence and focus sound impossible. I'm a real scatter brain. My cousin calls me a "dropper"; N loves this, and I have to admit it is kind of true. I leave things around; I half finish tasks. It's not pretty. "Do less" gives me a fighting chance of working toward diligence. There are two parts to this. On the one hand, when I'm stressed or feeling my plate is over-full, the dropping goes up exponentially and I feel justified about it. On the other hand, when we're at a good hum with a full, but not over-full plate, I'm able to reign in the scatter-brained-ness and see things through.

This year in "doing less" has certainly not been about doing nothing. It's been about saying yes to some things and no to other things so that the things we say yes to actually get accomplished and not left half done. Although, since I'm part of this deal--let's be honest--some things are still dropped half way through.

The good news of faithfulness

We spent the weekend with our local church family hashing out God's call to magnify his glory by introducing people to life in his kingdom. We are 100% on board with the church vision that people in our city have repeated opportunities to experience the life-changing reality of Jesus Christ. We really struggle with understanding how our family is to participate in this.

In our year of "do less", we're hearing from the pulpit "do more". As we grow older and are more comfortable with how God made us, the "success" stories presented to us don't look like our lives. Whether it's true or not, what we seem to be hearing is that who we are isn't valuable. We need to be X. X meaning more extroverted, more exhausted, more what we weren't made to be.

As I step back and look at who N and I are, we're the un-glamour family. Professionally, we're actually reasonably accomplished; N has worked on some high profile video game titles, I've published a couple books. But when I think about our lives in among our neighbors and friends, there's not a lot of flash and bang. We're not going to win community service awards for hours at the soup kitchen. But our neighbors will drop by to borrow an egg or ask for computer advice. People from 5, 10, 15 years ago will call when they need a friend. In a dozen months, we've had about that many out of town visitors.

Doing less goes hand in hand with marginal living and allows us to steward what we have. Because we're not out running around every weekend, N has time to learn how to keep up our yard. This is important first, because it is simply part of being a good neighbor and second, because it helps us connect with our neighbors who happen to care about their yards and are way more knowledgeable than we are. Because there are "margins" in my life, white spaces, when crises arise as they seem to with some regularity, instead of being bowled over I can pray and contribute.

Our pastor reminded us this weekend that becoming a child of God cost us nothing (because Jesus paid it all), but that becoming a disciple costs us everything. I don't disagree. Following Jesus is about recognizing that we are dead, dying to ourselves, so that Christ lives in us. But these words coming from a go-go-go church planter easily sound like we have to burn ourselves out to become disciples. I know the Apostle Paul uses a lot of race and training imagery, but he also exhorts the believers in Thessolonica to make it their ambition to lead a quiet life...so that their daily lives would win the respect of outsiders.

Maybe if I could summarize our struggle it's that we are Appalachian trail through hikers who feel exhorted to sprint marathons. What we have to offer is the faithfulness of putting one foot ahead of the other, mile after mile. No flash, no oos and ahhs. I think this is a deep grace in our lives, and I think there is an element of gospel-living in this that I'm unwilling to give up in order to squeeze ourselves into a check box that makes sense to who knows who? I live with the deep trust that as we are drawn deeper into God's grace, our lives will be more and more aligned with God's view of and work in this world. How could it not be?

YAY Grace; What? Suffering?

Noticed this juxtaposition in yesterday's lectionary reading:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

As I look forward to celebrating Easter, this sounds AWESOME!! But the very next line is:

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

I get rejoicing in "the hope of the glory of God", but I'm honestly not yet at the point of rejoicing in my sufferings. The place where I might connect to this idea is in the following line:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

While I might not rejoice in suffering, I am aware that I am weak and ungodly and that Christ has been and will continue to work in me something I cannot do for myself. And if I can ever get to a place where I can rejoice in sufferings, I think it might start there.

~Passage from Paul's letter to Roman believers, chapter 5

That's a lot of failure

In the lectionary today:

After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades. In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.
~The good news according to John, chapter 5

Now let's assume the waters stirred daily and we take this guy as this word that he tried to get himself to the pool of water believing that if he was the first one in he would be healed. That's 365 days of failure each year times 38 years or 13870 failed attempts at healing. And even if he was disheartened and gave up and didn't even try 10% of the time, he DID try almost 12500 times and FAILED every time.

All I can think of is persistent desperation. And I wonder if I could handle that level of failure and I wonder if I would believe a guy who said, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”

I have no grand conclusions, but I'm totally in awe of this level of persistence and desperation.

Lenten reading

Here is part of the Daily Office from the BCP for today:

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying,

“I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.”

And again,

“I will put my trust in him.”

And again,

“Behold, I and the children God has given me.”

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
~A Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2

Chicken and Ashes

Ash Wednesday Collect
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing you have made
and forgive the sins of all who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns
with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
~1979 Book of Common Prayer

Today begins the season of Lent, a time of fasting and mourning our sins as we look forward to celebrating the work of Jesus on the cross on Easter morning.

I was worried that the last post sounded too final, like I had arrived and figured things out. In his second recorded letter to believers in Corinthians, Paul writes to them about giving and calls it the "grace of giving". I need our annual giving tally, I need to list the recipients of these gifts because I need to be able to see that kind of grace in my life.

My dead heart is a hoarder. I have never worried about having food to eat or a roof over my head, but I do find myself running through what ifs. Having a giant pile of cash stashed in the bank makes me feel better, like I'm the master of my own universe. I do think that stewarding our money well by planning and saving is a good idea. But giving presses me into God reminding me that every good and perfect gift comes from him, reminding me that I am NOT the master of my own universe.

In my life, frugal choices have to be balanced with generosity because otherwise I'm just pretending I've got my world under control. When I see the tally of our giving and I experience the sting of "but I could've done X" with that money, I have the opportunity to remember that God has blessed us with abundance now, that my future "security" is not something I craft out of dollars in the bank, and that I have been invited to participate in God's greater work in the world.

Anyways, all that for 89 cent chicken, huh. Well, the start of Lent seems to be an appropriate time to remember and repent of the many ways that I am wretched and money is certainly one of those ways.

89 cent chicken and stewarding what we have

In the last post, I wrote about ways that I've been preparing whole chickens I get for 89 cents a pound. And then I thought to myself, "Why's it so important to me that the chicken is 89 cents a pound?" As it turns out, this is actually related to the year of "doing less". Doing less doesn't mean we're doing nothing. What I'm finding is that we're being drawn back over and over again to "stewarding what we have".

It's tax time here at our place and this ends up being our annual tally up how much we gave away assessment. We try to give away 15% of our gross income every year, but stuff comes up and we may give away more.

89 cent chicken instead of $3.99 chicken helps us to support:
Our local church that invests in us and our community
Friends who invested in us and are now missionaries in Thailand
A child in South America through Compassion Intl.
Friends who have been working to get kids off the streets in Tanzania
Friends who invested in me when I was a college student. One couple is now investing in post-college people and new teachers across the US and another is investing in college kids in Hungary.
Friends who work with the urban poor off my college campus.

I like doing this annual tally because I'm reminded why we didn't buy a fancier house, cooler, new gadgets, and hip furniture and why we do drive older cars and look for ways to spend less. Would it be nice to have our lives "tricked out"? Probably, for a while. But what means more to us is having relationships that are meaningful. We're not the most relationally savvy folk around, so we're grateful to the folk that have poured into us. And I think that's a good thing and something the Apostle Paul encouraged. We want to help them out as we can and right now that's financially. We have money and when we steward our money well, we get to participate in extending the kingdom of God far beyond what we could do with our own two hands and two feet.

Those are the thoughts for the day, more on doing less and stewarding what we have later.

The latest in whole chicken

So I discovered that my local Costco sells 2 whole chickens that are about 4 lbs each for 89 cents/lb. This is a great price to me and solves several issues in our kitchen: 1) a husband whose preferred meat is chicken and only the breasts 2) a wife (me) who prefers thighs if I'm going to eat chicken and 3) bones for soup stock. And I'll mention the 89 cents/lb again because well short of moving to eggs, tofu, and beans, none of which my husband eats, I'm not sure we can secure meat much cheaper.

So I've done a number of things in the cooking of whole chicken. I started with oven roasting whole chicken the low and slow way which Alton Brown has recommended. Results were fine as in I was happy with the moistness of the meat and the flavor from various seasonings. But low and slow requires a fair amt of preplanning. Then over Christmas I watched Jacque Pepin's youtube video on deboning a chicken and decided to try that. If you are him, you can do it in 5 minutes. It took me more like 20-30. Results on the grill were actually great, but I had a hard time figuring out what was dark meat and what was white meat. Given the above parameters, this was unacceptable. And 20-30 min of prep in chicken slime was a bit much. SOO...currently I'm butterflying/spatchcocking chicken. This is way easier than deboning and way faster than the low and slow method.

All I do is take a pair of scissors and cut out the backbone of the chicken. Trim off a little fat, flip the bird over and crack the breast bone. This allows the chicken to be flattened and ensures that I can have a cooked chicken in under an hr instead of the 3 or so hours with low and slow. So it's a touch more work that just seasoning a whole chicken but cooking time is greatly reduced. It's a ton less work than deboning entirely and I can still clearly identify all the meat parts. A happy compromise in my book.

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BTW the post that I've been ruminating about for several weeks as a follow up to the last post is what we're actually doing in our year of "doing less", but writing about chicken was easier today. So that's what I wrote about.

Love, Actually

On this Valentine's weekend, I want to discuss why I find myself mostly watching action flicks. Well, first, my husband has a big DVD collection from his single days. Going through our pre-paid entertainment collection means that we watch guy-oriented, action-flicks a fair amount. This was initally annoying. However, the more I'm married the more I find that watching the alternative and what I used to watch, chick-flicks, doesn't do anything for me. Now that I'm in a real live, flesh-and-blood relationship, I can hardly stand to watch what passes for one on screen. At its best, an on-screen relationship is like eating cotton candy; a sweet carnival treat that isn't filling. But really, most of the time, I think to myself, "But you guys actually suck as people and have no idea how to survive as a couple long term."

I've been thinking about love lately because I am recognizing how UNloving part of me is. That's the part that feels, "I want what I want and that's what I should get." But I'm also observing that I'm getting Holy Spirit nudges, more like sharp elbows, to consider, "What is best for him/her?" And as I work out what is best for another person and move in that direction, I find that it comes at a cost to me. But I'm paying that cost and I can pay that cost because Jesus paid the ultimate price for me.

My objection to fantasy, Hollywood relationships is that it sells love as a feeling. So I feel cheated when love has me awake early taking care of my child while my husband sleeps in. But when I look to Jesus, what I see is someone who claimed to love people and demonstrated it by dying in their place so they could be rescued from eternal death. When I look away from Hollywood toward Jesus, love is hardly a feeling. It is sacrificial action for the good of another. In that context, it becomes important to me that my husband gets the sleep he needs and I can gladly (most of the time) take kid duty.

I have seen long-term marriages that seem to thrive while neither party are believers. That's amazing to me and maybe I don't know the ins and outs of those relationships. But in my marriage, my parent-child relationships, my sibling relationships, my friend to friend relationships, the model of Jesus's sacrificial love and the promise that God will help me actually love others--that's what makes love possible in my life. Maybe I'm a particularly crappy person, but being honest here, without that, I'm a pretty selfish person who couldn't give a rip about how anyone else is doing.

Sacrificial action on behalf of another modeled after Jesus's life; that's love, actually.

I am one of the dead

The past couple months have been a rough time. Not only have I felt stretched physically, particularly as I've been smacked with 3rd trimester fatigue, but emotionally, I've felt barely able to hang on. In this frame of mind, I encountered the Apostle Paul talking about his rough time in his second letter to believers in Corinth:

...this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers.
~Chpt 1

As I've been meditating on these verses, I feel my faith is being pivotally changed under the gentlest care of a loving God.

During this rough time, it has become crucially apparent that I am powerless to solve the problems in and around my life. I am one of the dead. The natural processes in me are corruption and decay. Even if I wanted to I could not grit my teeth and make stuff happen; be holier, love better, trust God more. But in Christ, I experience life. I am one of the dead who is being raised to life by God. My part is to submit to that reality--I think that's what hope is--and there I find that I am indeed delivered, I am being delivered, and look forward to continued deliverance.

I think this experience is another reason why 2011 needs to more about "doing less". The cultural influences around me--my profession, the productivity/finance blogs I read, my church community--place a high value on getting things measurably done. I think there's an appropriate place for action and tangible accomplishment, but in this season, I think a mindset of "doing less" will allow me to better see and experience how "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me." If you're a praying person, I would appreciate your prayers during this time.

Do less

We started the new year with N, my husband, fuming about how December went and complaining that we needed to do less. Or that's how I read it. December really wasn't all that bad. My brother visited for 2 days; we had N's company party to attend, and a cousin of mine came for a week from Christmas eve to New Year's eve. Socially, December wasn't much of anything. Granted the first two weeks I spent running my feet off taking care of our toddler and my post-operative mother-in-law. And then there was the impromptu pizza party at a neighbor's house on a Friday evening. We kind of let Christmas sneak up on us gift-wise, so there was a lot of last-minute head scratching, Amazon buying, and post-officing. And there was that baking stuff for the neighbors. So maybe December was a bit fuller than I thought. And to drive the message home January started off with a bang and not of the good variety. So at this point, I'm a believer. I am on N's side; 2011's theme so far is "Do less."

So far we've said no to all the birthday parties we've been invited to. I've promised N that I will tell anyone who wants to fly in to visit us to postpone their trip. We have a number of visitors already in the books. L's godmother in February, my family in May, my in-laws in the winter. Our second child arrives, as a hopefully permanent family fixture, in April. So we've got a number of good reasons to give people for visiting another time.

Our church is having a women's retreat in early Feb and a larger, longer family retreat in early April--yes, right before the baby is due. We're planning on prioritizing those which means we'll probably try to keep the remaining weekends pretty clear of "events".

Three weeks into this new year of "doing less", I'm observing first, that our ordinary life actually takes a fair amount of work and has a lot of moving parts. There's simply quite a bit to do even without "adding stuff". I put that in quotes because I realize for some people with different personalities than ours the "added stuff" is ordinary life. Spontaneous is good!! We're routine type people and events really knock us back. The second observation I have is that I'm still seeing God insert key relationships in our lives.

We keep a white board as an attempt to organize our life. On it I put a drawing of our block and the names of the people we've met and are praying for. There's been a family katy-corner from us that I sort of met months ago but haven't been able to get to know. Just this week, I've gotten to chat with the mom twice. Her sons are 3 and 5. We've been able to connect over having kids and talked about what having 2 kids is like. She has a research background and works at the university, so we've connected there. These times have been just what I've wanted and have been beautifully woven into our ordinary life. They haven't felt like an event or a doing, just crossing the street to let our kids play together or crossing the street to chat neighbors with neighbors. If "doing less" means more of that, count me in.

Top tools of 2010

Happy New Year!!

This is an incomplete list of tools that were new and handy for me in 2010. By new, I mean that we got them last Christmas or this year, not that they are new to the world, just new to our world. And handy is as described

Microfiber cloths -- 36 pack from costco for ~$15 from the automotive section; among my peeves about cleaning, rinsing is probably one of the highest peeves. And for mopping this is definitely true. By having a giant pile of these cloths, I forego rinsing and just dump the dirty cloth in the laundry machine. Particularly useful for mopping since I have about 250 sq ft of tile to mop and I do it by standing on two cloths and "skating" around the tile.

Electric kettle -- Christmas present from 09; great for coffee which is its primary use, but also has been great lately since my mother-in-law uses it to make tea, wilk, hot lemonade, and to fill her water bottle.

12 cup French press -- we previously could only make one mug of coffee at a time. Now we can make up to 3. On weekends when we both want coffee, this simplifies things greatly instead of making a mug's worth, cleaning the press, and then making the second mug.

Summer baby gate -- one of the few gates that stretches 10 feet. Keeps L away from my husband's TV/sound system/gaming systems. Sturdy enough. We bought different 2" screws to go into studs and modded it so the door isn't in the middle section but on one end.

Diaper liners -- L's been in cloth diapers since she was 5 m.o. but I didn't bother to buy diaper liners til this Sept nearly a year later. What an idiot I am. The liners are flushable and hold the poo so it just plops out into the toilet and flushes away. SO much easier than scraping loose poo out. Also reduces the gross out factor which really bothered N. Worth every penny and I cut them in half since they are too big and I run them through the laundry if they are poo-ed on.

Text messaging -- N and I welcomed ourselves to the 21st C by learning to use text messaging. Long story short, very useful for short communications particularly for me because I'm now frequently not by my computer, but I can have my phone on me. (We used to do a lot with IM.)

Kitchen timer -- both the microwave and the oven have timers on them, but on a busy morning those can be unwieldy. Having a separate, digital timer on the fridge has been super handy for lots of things -- steeping coffee, reheating pizza slices in the toaster oven, keeping track of bread rising, reminders to check things on the stove, etc.

Neilmed -- It's for rinsing the sinuses with saline. Mother-in-law gave us a bottle in Feb, but we didn't start using it til fall. Has made a noticeable improvement for me with allergies. If I visit a cat-hair infested place, I can come home and rinse out my sinuses and be in good shape pretty quickly. Trying it out with the current cedar allergies, but results are inconclusive -- I'm still kinda miserable.

Plastic scraper -- I saw these scrapers in a kitchen store and modded a plastic lid from some disposable container to that basic shape. Very handy for cleaning out leftover dough that would otherwise get stuck in a sponge.

Kitchen Aid -- anniversary gift from my husband; I learned to make sourdough bread this year and have been making 2 loaves a week for most of the year. Hand kneading is laborious and the little one always seemed to want some TLC in the middle of it. The kitchen aid mixer with dough hook has definitely streamlined the process. However, at it's very high price; seems like it will be years before it gets paid off. Feel I should use it more, but I'm not much of a baker aside from these breads.

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None of the links are affiliate links, I get nada, but thought they'd be helpful.

I realize that this post is not about Jesus and was not written in the morning over coffee, but there are coffee related tools in the list. Hopefully, that counts enough.