Kansas

I heard a sermon once on mountains and valleys in our spiritual journey. It was a great lesson and has stuck with me over the years. The pastor talked about our spiritual journey and the highs and lows and the contrast and importance of both.

Mountain top experiences are important in our walk with God. There are a number of stories in the Bible recounting God meeting with and speak to people on the top of mountains. We all want those experiences. Conference, summer camps, sermons, and personal devotions. Seasons where God is so close we feel as though we could physically touch Him. Those moments when we know He is speaking to us with startling clarity.

In contrast valley's aren't as popular. When we think of the word valley in the Bible I think it's safe to say many of us jump strait to Psalms 23. Valley's are the low places in our journey. It's where we encounter pain and doubt and questioning. The speaker pointed something out that we often over look the fact that while mountain's are wonderful, things grow in the valley. We all desire mountain top experiences, but it's often in the valley's that we grow. The struggling that comes with our spiritual valleys can bring forth a lot of fruit.

It's a wonderful analogy. But he forget something. He forgot Kansas.

Let me explain.

I have spent all but 3 years of my life living on the East Coast. My roots run deep into Maryland's sandy soil and Virginia's red clay. But my younger brother and I are the only ones in my family who can say that. To my parents and grandparents the Mid West is home. My mother is a Midwest farmer's daughter, and my dad's great grandfather was a circuit preacher. Starting in their 20s my parents started migrating East to eventually settle in Maryland, but Kansas and Illinois especially are sacred places for my family.

While salt water my run in my veins, my father's are fill with the Colorado mountain stream water. And so, as often as he could my dad would round up as my of his six kids as possible, pile us into a mini van and drive from Maryland to Colorado and back. Personally I have made this trip three times that I can remember, though pictures show more trips than that.

To get from where we were to where we going we had to pass through Kansas. It's a long drive. Land locked on every said Kansas is flat. No mountains, no valleys, not even hills. Flat strait roads as for miles. Valley's my be lush, but Kansas feeds America. Over 88% of Kansas land is farm land. Over 9 million acres of wheat and 4 million acres of corn are planted there every year. I looked it up. It may not be much as far as scenery goes, but it get's the job done.

I think back to those drives across Kansas. Mile after mile of predictable scenery. It wasn't the forests and streams of home or the wilderness of mountains we were driving towards. It was the in between place. It held little interest to my adolescent imagination, but it was necessary to get where we were going.

When we see our faith as all mountains and valleys we loose perspective.
We expect everything to be either an emotional high, or a season of crisis.

Most of life is lived in the middle.

The day to day of our faith.
Waking up
Reading our Bibles even when it doesn't seem to make a difference.
Choosing to loves those around us.
Walking the dog.
Diving car pools.
Interacting with our co workers.
Showing up and choosing to stay engaged when what we see before us is the exact same thing we see behind us and there doesn't seem to be any change in sight.

It may not be the popular thing to say, but some times faith is about going through the motions when things seem flat. We shy away from these seasons saying that they are lukewarm, or that we fill in-authentic. We are afraid of a faith that is about checking boxes. We become so wrapped up in being genuine that we drift away from daily discipline lest they become route or routing. But some times faith, some times obedience, is accepting the ordinary and trusting that it is needed to get you where you are going.

Some times the plains are the hardest season. Things are fine and steady and we forget the joy of the mountain and who gave it and the pain of the valley and who brought us through. There are stretches of struggle, and there will be stretches of shear joy, but in between is the spiritual Kansas.

Being an Extrovert in a Introvert Society: Part One

Years ago my dad started a tradition. Whenever one of his children gets married he writes two letter. One for his child and one for their spouse to be opened on their wedding day. Being the fourth to get married I knew these letters were coming and looked forward to reading them.

Though my father wrote about many things in those letters, there was a common theme in both that has stuck with my husband and I through nine years or marriage. Dad wrote about cultivating a home that was focused on people. As he put it "We chose to clutter our life with people not things." In that one sentence he summarized a family culture I knew, but never knew how to articulate.

Josh and I have tried to make this a motto in our own home, though often it isn't always as easy as I wish it was.

In many ways I am a perfect storm when it comes to the need and desire for community. I truly believe that God places in his church a call to walk to through life with others. I think this is especially strong in women. Add to those two things my bent toward being an extrovert and you end up with some one who doesn't always know what to do when left to her own devices.

As a child my out going personality was easy to see in a positive light. Between my dad being a pastor and my mom working for the school I attended I was often expected to play greeter for the new kids and it was a role that felt natural and easy to me. People like outgoing children who smile and strangers and talk to the new kid.

Over the years though my desire to build relationships has started to feel like a burden. My outgoing personality and pension for initiating have become a personality quirk to be managed rather than celebrated.

In the age of social media, texting, and telecommuting it seems that the introvert is king. Search "introvert" on pinterest and you will come up with pages and pages of links on how to care for, understand, love, and be friends with an introvert. Search "extrovert" and you will find a number of links as well, most of them about introverts.

On the one hand I appreciate pieces like this. For most of my life my closest friends have been introverts and so insights on how to understand them are appreciated. On the other hand there is a small part of me the curls up and pulls back with every one of these I read. I fear that my desire to engage in friendship and build up the Church body is perceive as needy, clingy, obnoxious, and ultimately unwanted.

I have noticed a change in myself over the past few years. An unwillingness to initiate contact. When my husband and I purchased our home five years ago it was partly because we wanted more room to build community. We had a desire to have people in our home and use our space to minister to others. And yet I can't remember the last time we invited people over.

People are busy.
We are busy.
Schedules conflict.
You can only hear excuses so many times before you start to pull back. 
Before the door that once one wide open slowly starts to close.
You can only hear no so many times before you start to guard your heart against the inevitable disappointment.
A guarded heart is hard to share.

And so I find myself at times in a season of isolation. Holding every one at arms length, afraid of committing some social blunder. Afraid of being rebuffed again. Resisting the urge to reach out to others. Ignoring the promptings I may feel to send a text, make a phone call, or suggest a coffee date.

I can defend this behavior to myself to no end. Declaring I need space and that it is simply self preservation. I argue that I am pouring into my kids and husband and that those are the only relationships I have time for right now. I hide behind this "season" saying it will pass and I will make community a priority "later."

But we can only dodge the truth for so long. Eventually it will catch up to us and shine a light on all the lies we have been hiding behind. The truth is God designed His church, Women, ME for community.

So now what?

I have been trying to reach out more. To invite people into my life more. To ask a friend for coffee, to initiate a phone call, to text more often. To listen to the still small voice I had come to ignore.

At times the out come is balm to my slightly bruised, extroverted heart.
A friend thanking me for taking the initiative and extending a dozen different invitations over the summer.
A late night cup of coffee while our hearts are slowly being knit together.
The unexpected, initiated text from a friend who will never truly know just how much her reaching out first means to me.

And for the times when I feel rebuffed again, when I feel to weary to place my emotions on the back burner in consideration of a friend, there is God's grace. His gentle reminder that if I am full of Him and His love and provision that there is ALWAYS enough. That I can give love and attention and compassion and not have to worry that my tank will run dry. When I meet with Him first, and invite Him into all that I do, then there is more than enough to go around.

God made me this way. And so I trust He has a purpose for me. I trust that my friends, my family, and my church need people like me. Even if I do invade their bubble from time to time.

To The One Who is Finally Using Her Gifts

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with a group of local creatives and just enjoy each other's company. We shared our stories, our backgrounds, our business and creative struggles and our hopes for the future. I normally love these meetings, but for whatever reason my heart just wasn't in this one. My brain jumped from thought to thought, not entirely sure why I was there or even if I fit with this group I normally love.

And then my attention was caught by the story one woman told. She is a women I admire and respect personally, creatively, and spiritually. I have never heard an unkind word from her. She is unfailing positive and kind, always encouraging, always offering a smile. She is one of the most welcoming women I know. Any one who meets her at the shop she works in, or a show where she is selling her beautiful work, walks away feeling like they have bee seen, like they matter.

She was telling her story about how she got to what she was doing now and how she has always been an artist and a painter. And yet, when she got to college she didn't study art, she studied ministry. She shared how she felt like art wasn't good enough because, "we have to do something big for God" and it was, "soul crushing." And I wanted to cry.

I think we all have felt that way at some point. I wonder how many women still feel that way. How many women are serving in ways they were never created to because they have bought into the idea that there things we do that are "ministry" and "God's work" and then  there is everything else? How many women are dying inside because they have been told that their gifts at passions aren't "right"? How many women are missing out on the work God has prepared for them because it doesn't look like what they, or others, thought it would?

I looked at this woman and thanked God that she listened to God's prompting. That she used her passion for art to teach children. That she paints beautiful things that brighten the lives of so many. That she is there, in that place, offering herself and her gifts to others. She allowed herself to see past a narrow interpretation of ministry and in the process found the work that God had created her for.

Instagram Summer

We are a few weeks into break and we have been summering hard. It's been a crazy week full of spontaneous activities and reworking plans. Nothing has been set in stone and we have been successfully embracing the spontaneous (not always my strong suite).

I have been having a lot of fun using my nice camera and I can't wait to show you all those photos. But until then here are a few of my favorite Instagram photos of our summer so far.

Happy mail coming and going.

Lots of time at the sewing machine. 

Legos, legos, and more legos

Reading for hours on end.

Lots and lots of time at the pool.

On Showing Up

I was cooking dinner with a dozen different, semi-related, thoughts running through my head. I stood over the stove, fork in hand, turning bacon and trying not to get grease all over everything.

My thoughts felt scattered and disconnected. Over and over I went back to the story of Jesus telling the disciple to throw their nets over the side of the boat.

I am horrible at remembering details so as the bacon drained I pulled up Bible Gate way to search for the story. Turns out there are two similar stories recounting two separate events.

The first one is Luke 5. After fishing all night Simon is told to go put his nets into the deep water. Despite having nothing to show for a long nights work, Simon did as he was told and ended up with so many fish he had to call for help pulling them in.

The second story takes place after Jesus is resurrected. After all the miracles and amazing things they saw at his side, Christ's disciples have gone back to fishing. Again they have caught nothing when Jesus tells them to put their nets on the other side of the boat. And again the take is to plentiful the nets almost break.

I stand back at my kitchen counter assembling BLTS (or rather BLs for the girls and I and a BLT for Josh) thinking about these men. Things weren't really going their way. Work was rough, and unfruitful. They had put in hours and hours of labor and saw literally NO return. It would have been really easy for these guys to have called it quits. What would have been the harm in calling things early? The fish weren't biting. Why not clock out and catch a few extra minutes of sleep? But they didn't do that. They were faithful. Even when things seemed pointless they showed up. And as a result they saw miracles, but beyond that, they saw Jesus.

Showing up when things are going well is easy.
People want to be part of something big.
As a church it's easy to show up when babies or born,
when the church is putting on a big out reach event,
when funds are being raised after a natural disaster.

It is easy to show up when God is clearly moving and there is revival.

It's a lot harder to show up to serve in nursery,
to clean the toilets,
to mop floors,
to fold laundry.

We all want to be part of the harvest. But being part of the planting isn't as glamorous.

My daughter wants to read her princess books, but doing sight word flash cards is boring.

I want to have deeper community with the body, but chasing a toddler around at prayer can leave me feeling frazzled.

I want to be close to my husband, but the to do list is long and by the end of the day I am too tired to spend real time with him.

I want to be closer to God, but I struggle to make time to open my Bible daily when I feel like He is silent.

I think about those fishermen and their faithfulness. I think about them showing up in the mundane every day. I think about what they would have missed out on if they hadn't.

I think about where God is asking me to show up. Not in the big ways. The conferences, the out reaches, the dates nights, and the school programs.

But the small things. The letter written, the meal cooked, the home work finished, the questions asked, the verses read, the hug given.

I think about what I a might have missed by not showing up.... and what might be in store if I do.

Changing Seasons.

It has been pretty quite on here. Not unusual I know. But it seems like a very long time since I have been here. Five months to be exact. It doesn't feel quite that long, but dates don't lie. The last time I shared here we hadn't even had snow yet. And now we are in the middle of a heat wave. We have already hit 90 a few times this spring and we are due for a few more 90 degree days in the next week.

When I sat down at the start of the year one of my few goals was to write more. Granted this is always a goal of mine but I had a slightly more concrete goals this time. Write a rough draft in 2015 and grow readership here so when I finally go to a publisher I have a decent size platform to present.  (You can read about my 2015 goals here.)

Best laid plans and all that.

There are a lot of reasons it has been silent here.

* In February and even a bit of March we had a number of heavy snows that kept my kids out of school for nearly three weeks. Not a whole lot gets done when you have three stir crazy kids stuck inside all day.

* I forgot how absolutely crazy toddles are. Tacy is in that into everything stage. She is amazing and wonderful but doesn't leave me a ton of time to sit and write. If she isn't into the toilet bowl she in the cat food and if she isn't in the cat food she is in my lap informing me that she "Wana bye bye." My family demands (rightfully so) to be my first priority. In this season and in every season to come they have to be what I think of first. Even if I some how manage to achieve my goal of being published and have the chance to do things beyond my current reach, to be the kind of writer and woman I want to be I cannot let go of that. Too many writers now become successful and as a result can no longer write about every day life with any sense of genuineness because their every day life looks NOTHING like that of their readers. Lord willing I want to write in such a way that allows other woman's souls to say "YES! Me to!"

* God has been calling me to other things. He has been showing me small ways to serve and minister to other's in His name.(You can read about that here.) In some ways this is hard. While I love what He has been calling me to do and know with out a doubt He using me, I ache for something bigger.  And yet, isn't that the very point of my writing? That God uses us right where we are, in our life stage, with our gifts. That living out the great commission doesn't require this big crazy extreme life. That a quite life in the suburbs can have as big an impact for the kingdom as one spent in an orphanage in a third world country.

* And so I find myself living with a tension of peace and desire. Peace with knowing I am serving how and where He has called me. Desire to minister and share and encourage on a bigger scale. Not always knowing how to share both of these sides with genuineness and transparency. Not wanting to preach contentment and being used where you are at, while my heart pines for something bigger. Not wanting to share about my desires and dreams for bigger things, when I think that in many ways this notion of doing "big things for God" has bred a generation disillusioned with the path God has placed them on.

* So that leaves me here. May 27th with only a few pages and a hand full of blog posts written toward my goal. Seasons are changing here. From summer to spring and perhaps the season of silence is coming to and end it is time for me to write again. Only this time I am reminded that seasons don't always come the way would expect. Spring here was all over the place. Sunny and 85 degrees on a Monday and rainy and 55 degrees the following Saturday. We can't always predict what the weather will be. This season of writing may not look like what I expected. Leaps and bounds, pages at a time, readership growing. Living out the great commission right where you are means knowing when it is a season to sit on the sofa with your kids, and when it is a season to push yourself and pursue opportunities God is giving you. Even if they don't look like what you would expect.

Here is to the next season. Whatever it may be.

How Sending Mail Has Become My Ministry.

I only have  short window of time while dinner cooks and the kids watch Hercules, but I felt the need to write a bit more after Tuesday's post.

Like I said in my last post I am slowly finding a balance between serving in my local church where I see a need, and finding other ways to use my gifts and talents to minister to others.

Obviously serving looks different for every one depending on their church, their gifts, their talents and their life phase. But I thought that maybe it would help to see what that looks like for me right now.

Aside from serving in our church nursery and, of course, taking care of and ministering to the members of my family these are a few ways I have found to serve God, bless others, and worship Him with my life.

I have taken countless spiritual gift tests over the years and the outcome varies. I do believe that, in part, God equips us for a task at hand. But, I also think many just have a God given bent toward certain things. While I have had a number of different outcomes both "mercy" and "encouragement" tend to crop up in my top three gifts.

(There are times when I roll my eyes and shake my head because what I see is my short tempter and tendency to be critical. But I have to remind myself that spiritual gifts aren't about me at all but God's work in me.)

Over the past month or so I have found a rather fun way to combine my spiritual gifts of mercy and encouragement with my God given creative talents, and my love of writing. Through Facebook and Instagram I have been able to participate in a number of swaps, secret sister groups, and Random Acts of Kindness with other like minded women. I have been able to send letters and small packages of creative goodness to other women who needs a reminder of God's kindness and goodness. And it is brought me so much joy!

I've enjoyed it so much that I find it extending beyond just strangers on the internet to people in my every day. I find myself picking up a card at the store because it reminds me of so-and-so or grabbing an extra notepad because I remember a friend saying they were looking for one.

I find myself praying over the letters and packages I send. Praying God will give me the words to share. That seeing a package in the mail will bring a smile to some one's face and remind them that they are loved and a valuable part of the church. I pray that God will prompt me to include the perfect items that will speak to their hearts. I pray that they will feel known. I find myself praying for people I have never "met" that they will come to find a relationship with Christ.

I realize that to many sending out mail and care packages may not sound like serving. It may sound silly and unconventional and not at all "ministry" but for me for now it is a perfect fit.

What are ways you can use your gifts and talent to minister to the body and bring glory to God? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Some gifts given to me lately that have made me feel loved and known and show God's grace and goodness. (Exactly what I hope to do for others.)