The Mailbox Chronicles

I grew up on a very busy street with neighbors on either side who we often had to call the police on.  We once had a transient man make his home at our front door.  We didn't even live in a sketchy part of town, but we most certainly did not live an neighborhood.

In August when we moved to the 'burbs I am fairly sure Jay wanted to cry and I wanted to meet every person who walked past our house.  This is no different that most social situations we encounter.

We are the first house in Pleasant-ville and the communal mailbox is about 200 feet from our front door and thus we are the freaking welcome wagon.  Because of the unfortunate prestigious placement of our starter home we meet new neighbors daily.

Yesterday:

AG and I walk out to the mailbox and an adorable family is a few feet behind us.  I am wearing compression pants, an old hoodie, TOMS, and haven't showered since my early morning workout... it's a cute look.

I check our mail.

I introduce myself and AG, apologizing for how shy she is as she stares at them.

AG then crawls into this woman's arms with a please save me from my abusive mother face.  Awesome.

Then we small talk, I meet their sweet little girl, and notice her pregnant belly.

Me: Do you know what you are having?  
Her: I actually just gave birth.  We got back from the hospital today.
Me: (to myself) Crap... fail.  That's what a new mom wants to hear.  You pushed a human out and look pregnant.  Recover, Em, recover.  She isn't offended but don't say anything else stupid.
(outloud) CONGRATULATIONS!  It's amazing that you could leave your house and on top of it, not be crying uncontrollably.   

I am considering only checking our mail under the veil of darkness from now on.

Bring it, Brene.

Fasting.

Does that word make you as hungry as it makes me?

It's that beautiful time in the liturgical season when Lent is so close you can taste it and you start eating everything you are contemplating giving up in mass quantities just in case you decide to give that thing up.

But then if you are like me, you never actually give it up.

I have been of the I don't give something up for Lent because I choose to take something on club for many many years. What that has really meant for me is I love excess and have horrible impulse control so instead of doing something difficult like fasting from any part of my fluffy life, I will just add more to my overcrowded plate... but I will phrase it in a way that makes me sound spiritually evolved.  

Guess what, friends.  I am not spiritually evolved.  I am spiritually numb.

I am reading Brene Brown at the moment and she speaks about the importance of vulnerability so I am practicing it now.  This Lent.  With you watching.

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ― Brene Brown

So this Lent I am saying... Bring it Brene!

Vulnerable confession: My life is so loud that I am having a really hard time hearing God lately.  The loud is my own doing, my own planning, my own turning on when I should be turning off.  I have felt  both numb and dumb to the movement of the Holy in my life.  This disconnect is both embarrassing and real for people working in ministry.  It's the unspoken demon that many of us battle with.  The battle of our own faith when we spend day in and day out working to nurture, reflect, and honor the faith of others.

As Lent has drawn near I know that it is time I get real with myself and my relationship with God.  It's time I start giving up some of the things that I enjoy (and that temporarily fill the hole in my soul that God desires to occupy permanently) and make room for the spirit to move through me and use me.

It's time I give something up.

A few years ago I left Facebook behind.  It was the one and only time that I have given something up for Lent and it was hard and beautiful and needed.  I am in desperate need of something hard and beautiful right now.

A few weeks ago Jay asked me, why are you never happy anymore?

Ouch.  And true.  And pretty painful.  I mean he is the grumpy one and I am Miss Mary Sunshine.  How dare HE call ME out on being down.  

Once I stopped being angry about what he said (only furthering his point, which was more annoying than anything) I started to take a good look at me.  This life of mothering and ministering should bring me much more joy than it is... but because I have packed it so full there is no ROOM for joy but only room for the next thing.  There is no room for Holy because I'm not giving the Holy room to move through me.  There is no room for the unknown because I've tried to schedule the unknown right out of my life. I have found that God tends to draw closest and move most powerfully through the unknown.  I have basically been boxing God out of my own life while try to infuse Her in to others' lives.  

When I give up control, when I stop planning every minute, those are the times in my life I feel a deep sense of the presence of God, yet those are also the times I feel most uncomfortable vulnerable.  

So, I am planning for a Lent of vulnerability   

I am FASTING.  I am cutting out one thing each week of Lent. One of my major time suckers.  I am seeing what happens when I remove all the little gods from my life and give God a minute to move in me.  

What are my little gods?  I bet you can guess them...

Gym 

TV

Spending

Internet

Sweets/Treats/Extras 

Sleep 

Note: I am not saying that sleep or the internet or working out are bad things, but in my own life they become things that take away from the Holy.

From Monday-Saturday each week during Lent I will eliminate one of these things.

Pray for Jay.  And AG.  And maybe for yourself if you cross my path on week I give up going to the gym.  

I will be writing about my experiences through the week.  Why those things hold so much weight in my own life.  What spaces are being opened up and doors are being open and how God is using my fasting to feed me, which I know She will, she is only waiting for the opportunity.  I am praying that this the numbness fade and my eyes open again to the presence of Christ in my life.

Life Lesson: No one cares about your stupid Pinterest project, Emily!

God has been pretty awesome lately*.  I had been praying a good long time for a few things:

1. Friends (my own age!)

2. A bible study that AG could be with me for. Since it would have to be on my day off I didn't want to lose out on an entire morning with her.

*note: God is awesome all the time, I know this, but I am selfish and often His awesome makes stretches me and I HATE CHANGE.  

So through the many ways and channels that God works a group of young mamas was assembled for a bible study book club.  There are four of us with 6 kiddos (5 of them are two and under).  Our first meeting was last Thursday.  I cleaned my house.  Like really cleaned it, I even mopped my floors which only happens 3 times a year.  I decorated for Valentine's Day with Pinterest crafts that made me look straight Martha Stewart.  I even washed the dog pillow.  Really people... I was on a roll.  As I set out snacks and made coffee waiting for my doorbell to ring I looked at my house and thought... 'Oh yeah, Emily... you are TOTALLY a grown-up and your house looks adorable'.

Enter women and kiddos and diaper bags.  It was an hour and a half of talking about JESUS and how to be a woman of God in this world.  An hour and a half of loving on other mama's babies. An hour and a half of hearing each other's stories. An hour and a half in the presence of other women walking this hard path of raising little people and loving our husbands and trying to somehow hold on to ourselves in the process.  For me, it was an hour and a half of overflowing grace.

Then babies were packed up and plans were made for next time and my dog got to come back inside.  

I sat in my kitchen feeding AG lunch and a thought occurred to me... no one said anything about my adorable Pinterest decorations!   In that moment I knew that God had brought together the perfect group of women for me. The ones who won't feed my ego but will nourish my soul.  The ones that won't perpetuate my desire to be the perfect mom/wife/daughter/Christian but who will remind me that we are broken people trying desperately to serve Christ.  The ones that care much more about my heart than my house.  

His providence continually humbles me.  I hope this week God's providence is revealed to you in a new and surprising way!  I also hope you don't waste too much time on Pinterest... apparently that crap won't make you friends!

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.