Happenings

Here's a nod to some practical stuff revolving in my ministry sphere at the moment.

1. It's YARD SALE time! Maybe you saw the email? Every year the church I grew up in hosts a massive sale to benefit Ranch on Jesus. These things are big. I mean... BIG. Each sale raises an average of $8,000! The dates are Friday, August 12th from 7am to 2pm and Saturday, August 13th from 7am to 1pm at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, GA!

A sale of this magnitude needs a lot of stuff and a lot of help. If you live in the Atlanta area click HERE to sign up to volunteer throughout the week. You may also bring donated items to Carriage Lane Church beginning Monday, August 8th. If you happen to live in Birmingham, AL (as I know many of my dear readers do) we'll be taking a load of items with us to the Atlanta sale. So gather up your belongings and get in touch with us before Friday, August 5th. You may only have one or two bags to contribute, but those one or two bags might be worth $10, $20 or even $100 in sales for Ranch! Totally worth it!

2. We're celebrating Christmas in July! Maybe you saw the email? Christmas may feel like ages away, but it is never too early to consider sponsoring an Ornaments4Orphans tree this year. Another simple way to make a big impact! www.ornaments4orphans.org

3. Things are really bad in East Africa right now. Maybe you've heard it on the news? The region was suffering from terrible inflation, now that suffering is compounded by drought. I feel sick listening to stories of Somalian mothers who had to abandon the bodies of their dead children in the desert a they fled to find food. I feel even sicker when rain seems to be beating down on our Alabama roof every night.

Uganda has been hurting along with all of her neighbors. Please pray for them. And if you are able, consider making a donation to help us meet the ever increasing cost of foods and commodities at Ranch on Jesus.

4. If you are thinking, What are these emails she keeps talking about? Email me at jamie@pearlministries.org to sign up for Pearl Ministries' email list and be in the know.

Crisis 1, Part 1

I remember exactly what we ate that day. Little sandwiches made from refrigerated crescent rolls. My sister must have been twelve and just venturing into culinary attempts. The small warm sandwiches she made sat cockeyed on our plates, the edges of frayed turkey and soft orange cheese seeped out of the sides.

I remember exactly where we sat. The cushion and the upholstery were both stiff. This was because the love-seat was supposed to be formal, purchased with the assistance of my mother's 1980's decorator who helped bathe the house in peach and light turquoise. I curled up against the large coral hued roses, trying to shrink my lanky teen body.

From the chair where he faced me he was completely unsuspecting. I doubt he had ever seen a display of desperate raw emotion oozing from a child. A child that was looking to him. Now gazing through the tunnel of time I feel a sort of tenderness for him, but at that moment in 1998 I was thinking only of myself.

But how did we get here?

Last week I finished reading Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans, a memoir of her faith crisis. As the subtitle puts it "how a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions." I loved it.

Her account exquisitely captured thoughts and feelings so many members of my generation feel. I took me back in time. It took me back to my crisis...my first one. Rachel was in her 20's when she was first seized with doubt. I was only 13. It was a terrifying place to be as an adolescent, especially terrifying because (unlike Rachel) I do not think I was wholly aware of what I was experiencing. I was not skilled at articulating my fears, and even if I had been my greatest fear was of disclosing my concerns to other people.

I was afraid of losing everything I believed. I was afraid of losing everyone I loved.

Internalized fears fuel anxiety which fuels depression. Late at night, swollen with insecurity, my parents could hear me sobbing under my bedsheets. I sobbed because I didn't understand anything anymore. I didn't understand why babies died like starving dogs in Somalia. Why Christians believed the Bible was the Word of God yet always managed to disagree about what it said. Why my church was full of white middle class people who never seemed to be troubled about anything outside of the suburbs. Why Paul made it seem like women were gum on the bottom of the church's shoe. Why there was Hell. How God was sovereign yet we had free will. Why Jesus says at one point he didn't come to judge the world and at another point that he HAD come to judge it. On and on and on and on. Tears on my mattress.

I was slipping, holding on by my fingernails. I wanted to die. I was afraid to die. I liked the prophets who wailed that they regretted their birth. I copied entire psalms by hand, psalms that spoke of tears and terrors.

My "A" average slid like an avalanche. I dropped out of eighth grade before finals. I stopped getting out of bed. My parents started taking me to a psychologist. He put me on antidepressants.

The worst thing of it all was the intense isolation I felt. Most eighth graders are just worried about wearing the right type of tennis shoes and whether or not they get invited to the cool parties. I think the teachers told the other kids I was "sick." I don't think any of the kids doubted for one moment that nothing was sick except my brain. My peers didn't reach out to me. How could they?

The adult world was eerily silent as well. Granted I didn't explicitly reach out for help. I was too young to realize people didn't go to hell for asking questions. But still, no one really knew what to do with me. I was the embodiment of their individual and collective fears. Fear that they had failed to "train me up in the way" I should go. And fear that if they tried to help me and failed they would somehow be responsible. Or maybe, I thought at my most desperate, they cannot face my own doubts because they cannot face their own?

At 14 I was standing on the edge of it. A turning point. I had my hand on the doorknob, poised yet trembling. I didn't want to walk out of that room. I didn't want to go there. To that place where He is no more. I looked over my shoulder frantically for anyone who would stop me. Anyone who would make one last dive, one sincere attempt to take me seriously. Anyone who cared enough that I was about to vanish from their numbers. An apostate.

Out of the corner of my eye I beheld one completely unsuspecting shadow of hope. So my mom asked him to come eat lunch with us.

To Be Continued...

Inevitable Tears

Today I lifted Middlemarch off the shelf and flipped it open to the final page. As I read those closing lines, lines which I have had memorized since high school, I pushed back the tears that were forming on my eyelashes. Without doubt, without fail, the end of Middlemarch makes me cry.

I've confessed here before about my Puff the Magic Dragon complex. Vivian told her preschool teachers that it made me cry. They've seemed to look at me with more pity in their eyes ever since.

My Middlemarch moment today got me thinking. I am not the weepy sort, but there just seem to be these specific triggers. The following list is of sentences and scenes that inevitably produce tears.

1. The last paragraph of Middlemarch. I don't think this would make most people cry...but I bawl.

2. "Hey Boo." If I could crawl into any scene of any movie it would be that one.

3. Second to that movie moment would be the closing chorus of Hark the Herald Angels Sing while George Bailey tearfully clings to his family. Or maybe the scene where Mary holds up a fistful of cash in the Building and Loan and asks, "How much do you need?"

4. "Jean Val Jean is nothing now! Another story must begin!!!!" The full effect of this can only be felt when heard sung with full orchestra.

5. The final moments of The Dark Knight. To explain this might require it's own post.

6. When Mozart's corpse slides into the mass pauper's grave at the close of Amadeus.

7. In 3rd grade I hunched over the bathroom sink bawling my eyes out as Little Anne drug her tired body onto Old Dan's grave to die. That sacred page from Where the Red Fern Grows still gets to me this day.

8. "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known."

9. Vincent, the song by Don McLean. On my 20th birthday my girlfriends took me to a Mexican restaurant and requested that the lounge singer in the lobby perform Vincent for me. He didn't know it so he sang American Pie (also by McLean). Not really the same effect, and it was kind of creepy.

10. The last bars in the score of the ballet, Giselle. The notes alone make me sob. The ballet makes me sob too.

I could likely make a list of 100 or more things that make me cry, but these little triggers, no matter where I am, what I am doing or what mood I am in, cause my eyes to well. I fought tears just making this list.

So I want to know. Am I crazy? Do you have specific things that get to you? Do you have triggers and if so, what are they?

(Update...Vivian reminded me this morning that I sob every time Woody, Buzz and the gang are sliding into the the garbage furnace and reach out silently to hold one another's hands. Beautiful.)

Underneath

Today I did some deep cleaning and organizing. I have no idea what possessed me. Generally I just shove things inside of things so that things look somewhat presentable. Today I opened up all those things to look at the things inside and DO something with them. I sorted through stacks of gift bags and folded crumpled tissue paper. I hauled up bins from the basement and yanked out all the oversized clothes I wanted to donate.

It felt good, but my house...oh my house...it still looks terrible. I feel as though I accomplished so much, but it cannot be seen with the naked eye. I am waiting for Scott to come home and ask me what kind of bon bons I ate while reclining on the couch today.

Then it occurred to me as I carted my last organized box back down to the basement...isn't this so true of ourselves...of the way God works in us? We keep waiting, waiting, waiting for some sort of transformation to take place, for sanctification to show up in our lives where we feel the messiest. It can feel discouraging.

But all the while God is at work doing things under the surface. Deep inside us He is scrubbing and sorting and stacking. He is reshaping not just the way we act, but the way we are. I forget this all the time. I forget how much has to happen in the invisible places before it becomes visible. And it doesn't happen overnight. It takes time, but the time is totally worth it.

I hope that thought encourages some as much as it did me today.

The Things We Talk About

It is a lovely morning. Not too hot. The birds are tweeting and the flowers at the First Baptist Church are showing off their splendor.

"Mommy," Vivian speaks loudly. She always speaks loudly. We're walking hand in hand through the parking lot. I've got her pink and blue back pack swung up over my shoulder.

"Yes, honey?"

"Why does Tanya have black skin and me and all the other kids have red skin?"

She asks this casually, as if she is asking me what sort of breakfast cereal I prefer.

"You mean white skin, baby?"

She thinks. "Yes, white red skin."

We keep walking, but I am secretly thinking about how I can run away from this moment. I don't want to do this. Not here. Not now.

Besides, this is Vivian. Vivian who has spent her life jetting back and forth to Africa, laughing with children from 6 continents in the Schiphol airport playground. Vivian who tells total strangers that she has 2 brothers and one sister, never mentioning that they are Ugandan and 12 shades darker than she is. Vivian who lives in a house full of photos of dark faces in a neighborhood where her "white red" skin isn't so common. Vivian who has played with Tanya at preschool since she was one.

NOW as we walk through the busy parking lot on our way into preschool. NOW she suddenly wants me to explain why we don't all look the same. I was really dumb for thinking she wouldn't ever want this explained to her.

It was a simple question. She meant nothing by it. Unfortunately her very sensitive, justice minded and overly analytical mother read entire decades of hate and suspicion into her tiny, innocent wonderings...panic stricken. Think. Think. How do I prevent my child from becoming prejudiced? Think.

I take a deep breath and tell myself to stop being so dramatic. "Well honey, God made people so we could have all different types of skin."

She thinks for a moment. I realize this does not exactly answer her question which wasn't WHY Tanya had black skin, but WHY she was the only kid in the class that did. How do I explain THAT in six seconds?

We're getting closer to the door.

"You know lots of people with black skin," I say nonchalantly. "Matthew...Mark...Martha...they all have black skin too."

She keeps thinking, then loud as can be states, "Well maybe since she has black skin Tanya should go live in Africa!"

I see it now, Vivian dressed in an antebellum hoop skirt generously offering to ship black skinned people back to the "motherland."

Our "after school special" moment is totally going south. I blame myself for even dragging Africa into this. Think, think, think.

"Pastor Larry has black skin and he isn't African. He lives in Alabama just like us."

"Oooh, I like Pastor Larry," she says with a grin.

I exhale. Glad the conversation ended on a more optimistic note, yet frustrated that I didn't get to resolve her issues. I just slapped on a band aid. I leave her at the classroom door reluctantly, terrified of what she might say. Hopeful that her "Back to Africa" campaign will slip into the recesses of her consciousness once she sees the princess dress up clothes.

I leave nervous and aware, aware that we've entered a new era. The why? questions have ceased to be just those simple Why can't I watch a movie? and Why can't I scratch my rear in public? types of inqueries. We've advanced to deeper issues. The sorts of thoughtful questions and opinions children state aloud because they have not yet learned that they are "inappropriate." Questions that still puzzle their mommies, their daddies, their teachers, diplomats and heads of state. Wondering why Tanya is the only black child in class is only the beginning. This is the gateway to more.

Why?

I am also aware that I am not prepared. I am not prepared for the questions. I want to answer them right...WELL. It feels impossible. I cannot possibly be responsible for a person's emotional, spiritual, ethical, moral and intellectual development and training! Who do I think I am anyway? Martin Luther King Jr.? Gandhi? Big Bird? I wonder if there's some formula for tackling your child's toughest sociological questions. Or maybe that's what public television is for??? Does Tanya ever asks her mom why? Why am I the only kid with black skin in my class? I wonder what her mom tells her. Her mom seems pulled together.

Mostly I think have GOT to stop being so dramatic about everything.

Before dinner I sit with Vivian on the green chair and she looks at one of her favorite pictures. A large photo of her as a toddler, her daddy holding her in his arms as a group of waist high Ugandan children stare up at her inquisitively.

"There's Martha," I say, pointing to a girl with a freshly shaved head wearing a red checkered dress.

Vivian smiles, then frowns.

"I want Martha to have long hair and red skin like me."

I wince inwardly.

"Why?"

She doesn't know why. She just does. She just wants everybody to look like her. Do three year olds just like sameness? Do they want everything to be as they are?

"I think Martha is beautiful just the way God made her. I think you're beautiful the way God made you too."

I can see her wheels turning. For the moment she seems satisfied. I decide not to flood her with a sermon, but allow our learning to keep progressing. I suppose this sort of instruction takes years, not minutes.

As inadequate as I feel I know I can't ignore these moments. To ignore them...to dismiss her honest questions...feels even more impossible than the idea of addressing them. What will that teach her? Don't wonder. Don't look to understand. Close your mouth. Close your mind. Build walls.

We can't learn unless we ask questions. We can't love and relate with large unspoken words in the way, tap-dancing around the elephants that sit in the room just waving their trunks at us. People who don't ask questions can't do much. They can't grow. They just stagnate or worse, spoil.

Why do people look different than me? Why do some kids have two mommies? Why do some people live under bridges? Where do babies come from? Why do people go to war? Why do people die?

WHY?

It's all coming. What will I choose to do? What will I say?

I want Vivian to be an insightful, wise and compassionate human being. I am not sure how to achieve this apart from praying a lot and conversing as honestly as possible. Conversations that involve awkward questions often occurring at inopportune times.

So we may look stupid asking. We may look even stupider trying to answer. But we ARE going to try, me and Viv, to hash out the nuances of life while walking through parking lots. I am sure we will fail some, but in all humility we're going to try.

In the mean time I am considering just taking a giant marker and writing "Despite what I say, I am not a racist" across her forehead.

Do You Read? And What?

The Internet at the office was on the fritz last week so I chose to do a good chunk of work at our local library. I frequent this library often, but I usually just dart in, grab the books I requested and dart out. No loitering.

On Wednesday I parked myself in a faux leather library chair and mooched free wi-fi. Starbucks has free wi-fi and faux leather, but the lattes cost twenty dollars.

From my little campsite in the corner I was able to survey the library quite easily. I was supposed to be writing something profound, but I just people stalked. Here's what I noticed.

80% of library patrons walked straight to the movie section. Not even a glance toward the hardbacks.

Now I am a big fan of the DVDs, but they aren't my favorite thing about the library. My favorite thing is the shelves of bound up words. I love to read.

But after several hours of library surveillance I grew genuinely concerned. Do people not read anymore? I've heard rumors of this floating around for years, but now I was witnessing it with my own eyes. Rack after rack of movies were being searched and plundered while the books were left alone.

I don't really want to get into WHY this has happened in our culture, but as a person who invests in words and hopes one day to create a book myself I need a little pick me up.

So...do you read? If so, how often? What? What do you love, like, loathe? How do you choose what you'll read?

I'm genuinely interested, so I hope some of you will emerge from the shadows to share.

I'll play first.

Yes I read. A lot. Not as much as I want to, but on a good month I can get through 10 books. It all depends on my schedule and the nature of the book. I also just make it a priority. I'm a fast reader and once I start a book I get sucked in.

My favorite thing to read? Fiction. There, I said it. Fiction. I read non-fiction too. I love a lot of non-fiction, but nothing speaks to my soul like a very good story. I am rather picky about my fiction, what it does to me and how it is written. I don't typically read "Christian Fiction" because I usually don't like what it does to me or how it is written. There. I said that too. I find the gospel is more authentically buried in works that are not OVERTLY preachy.

I think THIS article today from Andrew Peterson sums up my sentiments for reading fiction. I was going to publish this post yesterday, but am so glad I refrained so that I could direct folks to this article. It says everything I want to say.

I've got a little widget on the sidebar that always displays what I am currently reading. I don't necessarily recommend these books. It's just what I happen to be reading at any given time.

So how about you? I really want to know. What do you read? What do you enjoy reading? No right or wrong answers. Just curious.

Book Review: What Was Lost, A Christian Journey Through Miscarriage

I have been very open about the fact that I have lost many babies to miscarriage. Many. 4 to be honest. One before Vivian and 3 after. While my personal history is quite uncommon, I think miscarriage is a secret ember buried in the hearts of many women. And those who have not suffered one know another who has.

One of the reasons I have been so transparent with all of my own loss is that for such a common trial there are SO very few resources. I scoured the Internet like a hungry wolf looking for connections. I found bits and pieces, but there was never just ONE outstanding resource, no definitive guide, no bound up bit of help addressing a Christian understanding AND experience of miscarriage...until lately.



This spring I read What Was Lost: A Christian Journey Through Miscarriage. It was published in December 2010 and written by Methodist minister, Elise Erikson Barrett who herself endured miscarriage. It is insightful and lovingly written. Hopeful, wise and practical.

I wanted to tell you all about it because this book is not just written for women who miscarry. I believe it is something EVERY Christian should read. Chances are you WILL know a woman who loses a child through miscarriage. What will you say to her? Barrett addresses the odd and sometimes awful things well meaning people say to grieving ladies. She writes to help women graciously address those who are thoughtless and hopefully help us avoid saying those thoughtless things ourselves.

I truly believe this book will be a resource and refuge for any woman who has lost a child to miscarriage and any loving soul who wishes to understand and care for such sisters. I can't recommend it enough.

Independence Day

Today it was just me and Bono under a Joshua Tree washing dishes. I find anthems best for a housework soundtrack. I need something to propel my lead derriere into motion. U2 works. So does Michael (with or without his 4 brothers), a springy Johnny and June tune from back when they sound like they are singing into tin cans, and occasionally Sufjan or Sara, but mostly just for more pensive chores such as dusting and polishing. Though I can't remember polishing anything...ever.

Scott frequently walks through the door at 6pm to see me and Viv doing Beat It with broom like we're bad. He rolls his eyes.

Once he told me he never thought he'd come home to a wife cranking Michael Jackson through the speakers. What do you mean by that? He shrugged indifferently. I think he likes it.

Today Scott gave me the blessed gift of independence. Aloneness. Every young mother's chocolate. This felt especially rich because my family hadn't seen much of my eyeballs since Friday. I went to Mississippi with Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter and didn't return until page 451.

I vow, more to myself than my husband, to redeem the time lost in The Help by being helpful. Making his favorite granola bars, that zucchini bread that MUST get made before I can no longer see my counters, laundry, floors, tidy, etc.

"Try to have a good time," he says as they hurry out.

I smooth my list out before me. Splendid.

Often I read these lovely blogs about homemaking which offer help to the frazzled, the frail and the possibly reluctant domestic goddess. ME. They've got tips and charts and maps for the day, the week, the month, the next 40 years to help make life efficient and accomplished.

I am drawn to the women who write these sites the way braced faced tweens are drawn to Miley Cyrus, with 1 part admiration and 1 part secret loathing.

I try. I do try. My bootstraps are broken from trying to pull them up so often.

Things just seem to always happen. And the difficulty is that these are not things that happen outside of myself. These are not explainable, reasonable events that impede accomplishment or inhibit responsibility. These are inward things. Noises and compulsions that distract me...constantly.

Today I am alone. There are no distractions. Except myself. I am still here. I seem to be my biggest problem.

I huff and puff and haul me and my list into the kitchen for some scrub time, but I don't get far until the rat-a-tat-tat of my typewriter brain begins composing something. I stop and listen. I work and keep listening. Then I sit down to write what I'm listening to, just pieces and parts on the back of a dingy notebook.

I rise out of guilt and hurry into the kitchen. I grate zucchini resentfully, my will divided.

I sit back down. Up and down, back and forth like a manic maniac for over three hours. I must be manic the way my neurons are firing so quickly.

And I wonder if those time management moms hear voices while they chug through their time slots. Words like ping pong balls bouncing off of steel drums. Maybe their voices tell them to to place things in drawers, create order and remove stains. I want those voices to talk to me, but they never do. I start to question why the things I am best at are in no way practical and wonder what it feels like to be really good at really useful things. But then I also like the things I am good at. I like who I am. I think.

Somewhere throughout all that thinking two loaves of zucchini bread get made, and the bars, but it starts raining on the laundry, I give up tidying, and there are bits of scribbled on paper strewn across the kitchen table. I wonder if it was worth it. But I feel better. Less noisy. Purged.

The front door creaks open and 2/3 of our family comes bursting through sweaty and smiling.

"Did you have a nice time?" I ask as they hand me a half eaten box of popcorn from the Bass Pro Shop.

"We did, how 'bout you?"

I shrug and sigh and reluctantly smile, "I did. Thanks."

Out to Dry

We dried our laundry Ugandan style today, slung over the garden fence and draped in the bushes. The dryer that was dying in May coughed out it's final, cold breath this week. I would have ordinarily been more mournful, but we all saw this coming.

If descending passengers on Southwest airlines had been peering sharply enough from their windows they might have been able to see Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl panties sprawled out on our swing. These would be Vivian's undies...not mine...in case you were wondering.

We keep meaning to go dryer shopping, then putting it off. A dreaded chore. And honestly, as long as it doesn't rain, sunshine is free.

I also think losing something helpful helps us. I smiled out the window at Scott's plaid African shirt, the very smart one Theophilus gave him, as it clutched the bushes on our fence line. Six months back it was hanging on the lantana bushes at the Ranch on Jesus children's home, soaking in the sunshine.

We all think we need things and those things have buttons and parts that we push and make our world go. What happens when some of those buttons stop? What do we do? What do we really need? I like thinking about this while the clothes dry in the yard.