a family of 3

It's amazing how we loose ourselves... I apparently lost Emily-the-non youth minister-self for a while. My youth ministry blog has been kept up, my text messaging with youth has been steady, but in the mean time I've begun to slowly drift away from other things I love and people that love me. Ministry can do that sometimes... then God brought me right back to reality.

I'm pregnant.

It's amazing how quickly your priorities fall into place where there is a precious gift growing inside of you. It's also amazing how weird that is but I will write about that another time.

So on December 19th, between church and our annual youth Christmas Caroling & Party I took
two

Yes... two

Pregnancy tests. They both said "hey maybe your pregnant or maybe your eye sight is going"

So a day later I went to my doctor, who bless her soul had me take another test that told us "you crazy girl... you're not pregnant" but because she believes in instinct, and heart, and listening to the small voice she said "let's take a blood test... just to be sure"

and by golly... I knew I wasn't crazy and we were pregnant.

Jay and I spent a few days with our secret, holding it tight like the delicate gift it was until we told our parents on Christmas day. They didn't see it coming, which made it even better. My mom was up at the crack of dawn to open presents with my nephews so we only had to wait until 1pm eastern time to tell them. Jay's parents had a late night and weren't up till later. It may be possible that he called them over 20 times to try to wake them up, but I'm not saying anything.

And in those moments... it became real. We will be a family of 3. Our parents are looking for names they want to be called. We are looking at names (and coming up with all the ways they can be turned into teasing in middle school). My youth know and love to tell me how weird it is. We stop in the baby section on Target instead of just the 'useless crap' section. And we are getting our first ultrasound on Monday to see this little thing.

And that is crazy, and grounding, and real like nothing I have ever experienced.

And no matter how distracted, and flighty, and disconnected I can feel at times... each morning I wake and my hand goes directly to my belly and I know that nothing has ever been this good. Ever.

Is it mission trip time yet???

What is this amazing dance you may ask? well... it's CLOGGING!!!

Never in my life did I think that clogging would be a re-curring recreation for me but in the past year it just keeps coming up. Last May at Montreat I was blessed to experience old Bluegrass music with amazing youth ministers and a swarm of cloggers.

Today I got an email from our site co-ordinator for mission trip. Want to guess what our first evening activity is?... that's right... CLOGGING. The group above is the group that will teach us this summer. Clogging is quickly moving to the top of my list of reasons I love Appalachia. I think this will soar to the #1 spot after spending an evening with my youth clogging. I do plan on selling copies of pictures of me clogging at 7 months pregnant to start our child's college fund.

The fact that I get more excited everyday for the mission trip is not a good sign for me since it is 3.5 months away but... is it time yet????? I want to be clogging!

The Rutledges hold their breath for rain. Jay and I love nothing more than a day when the bottoms of your jeans are soaked and coffee warms your hands. We both fell in love with rain at different times. Jay spent his favorite childhood years living in Sedro-Woolley, WA, a small Pacific Northwest town where he rode his bike everywhere, mowed lawns to make big money, and explored the Cascade Mountains with his Dad. I went to college in Spokane, WA, the booming metropolis of Eastern Washington. This is where I fell in love with two things: rain and coffee, both still have me hooked.

Now, don't get me wrong, C'ville has some great coffee, but Washingtonians know how to 'do coffee'. By my senior year of college I had gotten the hang of it. I had a coffee date about everyday. Study coffee dates, girl-friend gossip coffee dates, coffee dates with my priest, coffee dates with the youth minister I worked with, and lots and lots of coffee dates that were supposed to be about learning but ended being about friendship. They always began the same way, peeling off layers of damp jackets and scarves, a warm hug, and a coffee. The coffee drinking was never rushed, it was always out of a real mug with a saucer, held with two hands and often, silence would set in and we would find ourselves starring out a picture window as the rain streamed down outside. Doing coffee is something I somehow lost along the way but today reminded me that I need to find it again. That time when you don't need to hurry out, when you can sit with someone in silence, and when all you need fits in a heavy ceramic mug.

I hope you get some time today to sit in silence, to enjoy the blessings God is giving us in this rain, and be still.

in the whale...

Being Still...

I am reading and re-reading an amazing book, Contemplative Youth Ministry: Practicing the Pressence of Jesus written by Mark Yaconelli. His words constantly remind me of why my heart was called to ministry. I have read this paragraph in his book a million times but each time my heart says amen, Amen, AMEN!

"When we allow ourselves to be open and receptive to God's love and presence, we begin to notice that God is alive and available. We begin to preceive that the Holy Spirit is present and working beneath the worry and activities of our ministries. It may even occur to us that God has been present to our young people long before they met us-before they were even born. When we stop to receive God's life and love, we begin to understand that the Holy Spirit has been seeking out our young people with greater passion and desire than we could ever work up. That's when it becomes clear that our ministry is really not about us. We notice a sense of relief that we're not the center of our ministry. We discover newfound energy as it dawns on us that our role in youth ministry is not to "make something happen!" Our task is to simply rest in wonder at what God is doing, and then lend a hand as we're needed." (Yaconelli 76)

HIS promise.

I am often shocked at the kind of person I am when I forget about the Lord's call on my life.

I am selfish.
I am superficial.
I am materialistic.
I am jealous.

I struggle with the grass is always greener affect. I think Facebook plays a huge role in that game in my life. I am able to see the vacations, the cars, the perfect looking marriages, the beautifully homes that my classmates have bought or built. And sometimes... that makes me mad. WHY NOT ME... why don't I have it all handed to me? Why must I be on a budget? Why do I clip coupons and shop at Ross?

As I sat in my small group bible study last week Thursday a woman I have some grass is greener envy towards said something that slapped me across the face

GOD DOESN'T PROMISE US SUCCESS

My immediate response was... YES HE DOES! but then I stepped by from my seat of entitlement and remembered that actually, he doesn't. God never promised me that I would own a huge house, or the wardrobe of my dreams, or a brand new Toyota Sequoia (and the money to fill it with gas). He promised me that he would provide what I needed. He promised me that if I followed His call on my life I would find joy. He promised me a family in Him that would love me exactly who I was.

Jay and I followed his call to Charlottesville and my human nature wanted that to mean that we would somehow have MORE than we did in Hawaii as a reward. That since we did this big thing for GOD he would give us big things.

Well he did... it just wasn't a new car.

I wake up daily knowing that my life has purpose.
My marriage is stronger.
I get college acceptance phone calls moments after the first line of 'Congratulations' is read.
I start my mornings with hot coffee, fresh bagels, and young people that love Christ.
I get paid to go on mission trips.
When I am sick... I am not only allowed to stay home and get well... but the staff prays for me.
It is completely appropriate to wear yoga pants and tie dye to work
I get to go to camp, sing songs, and watch middle schoolers meet Jesus
I have a beautiful wardrobe of Jesus t-shirts.

It may not be a huge house, or new car, or nordstrom's wardrobe but in the long run... these things are far more fulfilling that I would sometimes like to admit.

I am horrible at Advent-ing

You gain alot of clarity about your family when you live across an ocean and continent from them. I try not to think about all that is going on with them too often because, to be completely honest, it makes me sad. I love being in Charlottesville. I love being a youth minister. Those things allow me to stay present HERE, but I also try to protect my heart by keeping my distance from THERE (Kailua, my home town) and from THAT (all that is going on there).

I am very good at it most of the time. I am very good at it 11 months out of the year. Then December rolls around. My family does not believe in Advent (okay we do, but we choose to ignore it) the same way my family does not believe in birthdays. We believe in birthWEEKS and often birthMONTHS.

I don't think I ever really thought about why we do things so BIG in our family. But latley as I try, and often fail to focus on Advent I find my mind wandering to my family. My family is a smorgasbord of who God has put together to hold my life in place. We basically have 5 families categories...

My family: Mom, Whitney (best friend), Aunty Kanani (mom's best friend/Whit's mom), Seth, & Kainoa
Jay's family: Mama and Papa Rutledge
The Fishers: My dad's side of the family and a large percentage of the population of Kailua
The boys: James, Zach, and Patrick. Jay's closest friends and their wives.
St. C's kids: the families that grew up together at my childhood church, our parents decided to just raise us as a bunch. It worked really well.

Those people hold the story of who I am. Who my family is. Who we will become. And each of those people as individuals hold a world of hurt.

And when one holds a world of hurt... we each hold a world of hurt.
Together we are
divorced
job-less
widowed
addicted
recovering
lonely
betrayed
frustrated
abandoned
confused
lost
dying

Yet when we are together at Christmas we are also complete. We are perfect. We are healed.

Maybe I am horribly bad at anticipating Christ's birth because I get to live the abundance of that birth everyday. I get to be complete, perfect, and healed. I have that reflected and reinforced to me through my family. It's hard to anticipate what is already so real in your life.

I believe in a LIVING GOD who daily carries a world of hurt. He also allows me to carry a little bit of it for my family. He allows his strength to heal us and he gives us an awesome day to celebrate that with his birthday. So I guess it's just my families fashion to not celebrate the day and lead up to it with anticipation but rather celebrate Christ's birthMONTH in a BIG way.

So yes, I am a horrible Advent-er.

Love is a VERB

God is very clear on what he expects from his people.

Love thy neighbor (Matthew 32:29)

Whoever does not know love does not know God, because God is love (1 John 4:8)

I know that Christians can argue all day about homosexuality, but could we argue all day about the commandment of love? Jesus was very clear about a few key things in his ministry...

-Whether you like someone or not, you have to love them

-Just because they are on the outside of YOUR society doesn't mean they are outside of God

-Be BOLD in doing what is right even if everyone else thinks its wrong

It sickens me that adults have justified the behaviors of youth who have brutalized their peers because of their sexuality (or their race, or their religion, or their gender, or their weight, or their appearance) saying that 'they are just kids' and that 'it's not a big deal'. Tyler Clementi was 18 years old. He was a freshman in college. I think of our COOS college freshman, of their tender hearts and their new adventures and all that lies ahead for them. I think of my own insecurities and shortcomings and how raw they were to me during my early young adulthood.

And I also think about what kept me safe, grounded, and in the knowledge that I was loved exactly as I was... it was the Church, it was my mom, and the families that had raised me at St. Christopher's (the church I grew up in), it was the youth minister, Michelle, I worked with at the Cathedral in Spokane. It was my fellow Christians who reminded me of the greatness that lied ahead and that the best was yet to come.

We are called to love, in the verb sense. We are called to BE there for our youth, to be present, to notice. The stories of these precious young people who have taken their own lives in the past month because of the weight they have had to carry breaks my heart and reminds me that there is not a SECOND we can waste, that we must BE THE CHURCH to EVERYONE all the time. We must not only think about how much we care but show it. Say the words. Ask the hard questions, "are you okay? what is really going on?" and also HEAR. Hear where God needs us to be for his children and hear what those children are saying.

We must DO love everyday... it is a waste to sit and bicker about what we believe is right or wrong about another's life when we are then wasting time... time that should be spent loving Christ's children.