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?