Not cool, Robert Frost!

NOT COOL, ROBERT FROST!

I came across this little gem this weekend. It was during nap time when important things are supposed to occur in my house. The important thing that happened on Saturday was that I watched every single Kid President video on YouTube.  

Kid President brings up some important things in his pep talk:

• I'm on your team, be on my team
• That road in the woods is ROUGH ("NOT COOL, Robert Frost" may be a new way that I comfort young people walking those rough roads!)
• What's YOUR Space Jam?
• We were made to be AWESOME.
• It's everybody's duty to give the world a reason to dance.

I find it easy to forget that we were made to do awesome things.  That we are each called to change this world in our own way. That we each have a Space Jam in us. For me it gets lost in the menu planning and Facebook stalking. The gym workouts and diaper changes.  The laundry and the grocery shopping.  The Target runs and youth group planning.  I get lost.  I forget that my life is more than what I check off my to-do list on a certain day.   

We were not made to live lives on the smooth road but to walk through the rocks and thorns and glass so we can become AWESOME.  I have watched a lot of awesome in my 28 years on this planet.  I wonder if all of those awesome people know what I saw in them? I wonder if Pierce Temple remembers what power his imagination holds.  I wonder if Lehua, from my first year of teaching, knows that her spunk, her snark, and her attitude may have made me nuts at times but that they are powerful tools of her unique womanhood that will get stuff done!  I wonder if Lucille Caldwell knows (really knows) how many people fell in love with Jesus because she made us sit still, pay attention, and take our own faith seriously... no matter our age or how cute the boy across the room was.  

I wonder what my Space Jam would be if I put away my lists and plans and decide to just live the dream.

 

I needed Kid President to remind me that I need to pull my head out of the routineness that has become my life and expect more from myself, to not give up, to make my Space Jam.

 

So here is to each of our Space Jams... and giving the world a reason to dance!

 

And hey, if you didn't already know

I'm on your team!

Perfection

from the January 14, 2013 EYC Update...

Perfection. 

We are a little obsessed with it.

Perfect families.

Perfect bodies.

Perfect grades.

Perfect (insert your unrealistic noun here).

Webster has 18 definitions of PERFECT, the first four are:

1. Being entirely without fault or defect: flawless

2. Satisfying all the requirements: accurate

3. Corresponding to an ideal standard or abstract concept

4. Faithfully reproducing the original

I am starting to wonder who creates the ruler that we measure this perfection by. 

Who decides what our own personal perfect looks like?

Jesus lived in a time when 'perfect' meant you had to follow a lot of rules.  Rules about how you washed your hands before you ate.  Who you were allowed to interact with.  How you dressed.  Sometimes we hear that Jesus was PERFECT. 

To us, now, we see his perfection.

To His society, in first century Palestine, he was far far far from flawless, accurate, and corresponding to the ideal standard.  He ate with tax collectors and let a sinful woman wash his feet.  He touched lepers and called fishermen to be his apprentices. 

Jesus' measurement of perfection looked very different than his society's.  It still does. As His people... our definition should probably look a very different fromour society's.

What if we stuck to just focusing on one definition of perfect:

faithfully reproducing the original

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1-2, 14

Streamlining.

For 3 years I have tried to blog.  It has failed.  Epic epic failure.  As I looked to the new year I wanted my focus to be being PRESENT.  Being present for my own life.  I know myself, and I know to do that I need to write it out.  I knew that when I made two blogs a few years ago.  Emily's personal blog and Emily's youth ministry blog.  And both were epic failures.  Thank you for those who reminded me, you are the people I love most because you know I need to be called out.

For 3.5 years I have been trying to keep the distinction between Emily the friend/wife/sister/mom and Emily the youth minister.  Boundaries (which I am not saying I don't believe in but I am getting a little more realistic about) that I tried to keep to make my life manageable.

Well my life is NOT manageable.  

That has become pretty real for me.  I am a full time mom, full time youth minister, full time wife, full time daughter, and full time friend with a baby in childcare only 2 days a week.  I am one big ball of unmanaged mess.  But this is what it is right now.  This is what life looks like.  One big messy blog, filled with youth ministry rants and mama freak outs and life.  My vocation will never fit in the 9-5 world and it spills into my parenting and my marriage and my family.  And my family and my marriage and my parenting spill into my ministry.  It's not perfect.  It makes me feel guilty and blessed.  But it's all one.

So I've given up on trying to keep things in their neat compartments.  If I am living by my word in 2013
being present
it's going to be sloppy but it's going to be real.

and I figured out how to merge my blogs while AG ate lunch so bonus points for me today and successful multi-tasking and working at home with a 16 month old.  

Empty Tomb Moments

  First... watch this clip.  If you are anything like me, have a tissue available.

I believe that THAT is the kingdom of God.  Right there, on that court, is what eternity will feel like.  I don't know about you all but lately, I have been loosing some of my faith in humanity.  I know that our God can shine his light in even the darkest of places but sometimes it just seems unfair that those places are dark at all.  

Sometimes, I need to see a Jason McElwain.  I need to see that sometimes there is nothing but light.  A young man who humbled himself, served, and gave thirsty people water.  A young man who spoke words of encouragement and power into a team he loved but couldn't suit up with.  A young man who did all of this without letting a bitter root grow in his heart.  

And then, to see him receive the glory he deserved but never asked for... it is like seeing the empty tomb. 

So here is to a year of having 'empty tomb' moments. Moments where the light is so bright we momentarily forget there is any dark.  Moments when the power of Christ is so near we can't stop making 3-pointers.  Moments when we are so excited for one another that we can't help but to jump up and down and scream.