Ranched on Jesus

The Tyranny of Choice (Part 3)

2012-01-21T15:54:00.001-06:00

This is Part 3 in a Series. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Choice is a distraction, but it gradually becomes a tyrant. It creeps it's way into the commonplace corners then unassumingly takes over larger arenas.

The Fall of mankind occurred because of a devastating choice. Eve chose to eat the fruit. She wanted it. It looked good. Why would God say she couldn't have it?

Please do not misunderstand. Choices can be a very great blessing. Yet choice, like any good gift from God, can quickly usurp His place in our hearts.

And where it once was considered a privilege, choice is now regarded as a right.

The "right to choose" is the great justifier for snuffing out millions of little lights, for families crumbling to bits, for the re-sculpting of faces and bodies. Some parents are now allowing their young children to decide whether they want to be boys or girls as evidenced by the Girl Scouts accepting a seven year old boy into their ranks because he "identified as a girl."

We may choose to do with our bodies what we will, choosing to give it to anyone we like, yet we can also choose to eliminate the consequence of that giving with a simple stop at a clinic. We may choose who we wish to marry and just as quickly choose when to end it.

We have fashioned choices to avoid the consequences of our choices.

We leave our jobs, leave our spouses, leave our gender and leave our unborn babies in trash cans because we have "the right to choose." WE are the authors of our own lives.

Choice is regarded as so intrinsic to well being that we sneer at cultures who still practice arranged marriages or religions that discourage divorce. Choosing abstinence. Choosing faithfulness. Choosing loyalty. These are questionable choices because they certainly couldn't generate happiness. Could they?

These choices in our culture would suggest that we are happier. Yet it doesn't work out that way. Choice promises to make us happy, but it doesn't.

I am quite glad of the many choices I benefit from today. Two hundred years ago my lot as a woman would have been quite limited. The ability to vote, go to college, marry whom I choose or pursue a career would be unlikely. I am grateful that I have these options, but could I say that my happiness entirely depended upon them? Doesn't that somehow bind the quality of my life to externals rather than internals?

Yet we cannot accept this. If we end up unhappy it must be that we made the wrong choice. So we shop for a new spouse, a new religion, a new couch. If happiness eludes us there are always other choices available.

We cannot fathom the character building discipline of being able to accept our lot. Of being able to seek joy not in what we have but in who God is and who we are in Him. So choice continues to rule over us, preventing us from learning the true secret of contentment and averting our eyes from God.

To Be Continued

Photo Credit

Four

2012-01-17T17:24:00.000-06:00

She got an umbrella for her birthday.

It was the one thing she wanted.

She now spends hours hoping for rain. Even dark clouds will do.

She also received two volumes of Shel Silverstein.

Two volumes because, well, one can never have too much Silverstein.

Her favorite poems are the most disturbing ones.

She laughed when the page opened to this drawing.

And said she'd like to have this hat.

Her own drawings have improved. I often find her huddled up in a corner devotedly sketching the things she loves. Trees, penguins, our family and furry Japanese forest spirits.

I asked her if she would share her umbrella with Totoro.

She was understandably conflicted.

Yesterday she emptied her piggy bank and carefully counted each coin with her daddy. We took her riches to the credit union where she proudly endorsed her first check. She told the friendly teller that she liked her earrings and thought she looked "beautiful this morning." Then she told her that her funny voice sounded like the Wicked Witch of the West. I deflated. Then I snatched up the innocence that trickled through the words.

That stream grows thinner by the day.

She creates worlds I cannot see populated by friends whose names belong to no language but her own. I have waited years for her to begin calling her invisible companions by names which are found in the known world. I hope she keeps me waiting a few years more.

I will miss Hulla, Hairydo and Flaxsa.

The booster seat is gone from the table. The bed rail is permanently tucked away and each night she is tucked under a more sophisticated bed spread. But she still wants her blankie beside her. This helps soften the blow.

When asked her age at the library today she held up an extra finger.

She doesn't even hesitate, as if she has spent her whole life preparing for this question.

Those scratchy marks there on the wall,

They show how short I used to be.

They rise until they get this tall,

And Mama keeps reminding me

The way my dad would take his pen

And as I stood there, stiff and straight,

He'd put a ruler on my head

And mark the spot and write the date.

She says that it's my history,

But I don't understand at all

Just why she cries each time she sees

Those scratchy marks there on the wall.

Shel Silverstein from "Everything on It"

The Tyranny of Choice (Part 2)

2012-01-11T15:48:00.001-06:00

This is Part 2 in a Series. Read Part 1 HERE.

I often wonder why I am so happy in Uganda, why I feel so daily underwhelmed when in actuality everything is overwhelming. It is more than just loving the place and the people. It is something about the lifestyle I lead there.

Some say this is the "simplicity" of life in Africa. By this I assume they mean the lack of material possessions, because life in Uganda, from all that I have seen, is not "simpler." If anything it appears far more complex.

I do know what others are trying to convey when they say life is "simpler" in Africa. They mean there is less stuff. For Americans who practically swim inside a sea of belongings, the lack of material possessions in Africa can be refreshing. Visiting Westerners are like hoarders tunneling out into the fresh air and realizing another sort of life exists.

I know that this clutter free life is one of the reasons I feel lighter while we're in Uganda, but that isn't the whole of it. I feel lighter because while we're in Africa I don't have to make so many choices.

I eat what is put before me. If we go to a restaurant there are only three or four options to choose from. My closet only houses a handful of dresses, half of which are usually dirty. I don't have to choose from 8,000 movies on Netflix or 12,000 books at my library, what style of lampshade to buy at Target or brand of wash clothes to buy for which bathroom. I don't even have to decide which route to take into town because I don't drive there.

I hate shopping while we're in Uganda. I will often sit and wait for Scott as he makes his trips to the tourist and wholesale markets. I did not understand this atypical repulsion until recently. After all, why would I despise an activity I usually enjoy? What I realized is that I hate shopping in Africa because it forces me to make choices in a world where I am so comfortably choice free. The stakes of my choices there also feel incredibly high. Sales dramatically affect the lives of the sellers. How will I choose who to buy from? What will I buy?

There is a sort of freedom in Uganda as I am released from the multitude of choices I encounter day to day. It is like a cutting away of chaff, leaving substance in its wake. I am able to take the time, energy and stress I was expending on outward choices and turn it toward things of more significance. My soul, my relationships, my actual life. I thought my life was enhanced by choices, but in truth they were distracting me from it.

"Is life not more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?"

To Be Continued

The Tyranny of Choice (Part 1)

2012-01-07T23:06:00.000-06:00

Me and my sister at Disney Word circa 1991

On our family vacations, my parents always gave us spending money. This, I suppose, eliminated the perpetual whining in retail stores and demonstrated to us the value of a dollar. Standing at the gates of the Magic Kingdom, our little faces would tilt up expectantly to hear how much credit was going to be applied to our "account."

Within hours my sister would have typically blown every dollar she was given. She'd prance around fantasy land in a flashy hat, clutching a stuffed animal with the tag still in it's ear.

In direct contrast, the last day of vacation always found me with every dollar still intact. I agonized over the need to make a decision. There were so many choices, good choices. Would I make the right one? Perhaps around the next bend, the next park, there would be something even better. My parents, wanting to return home, would prod me to just "pick something already."

I envied my sister's ability not to be tormented by the responsibility of choosing. She acted and enjoyed. I didn't act and even after acting did not always enjoy.

Every day we each spend a large amount of time making choices. We open a closet full of clothes and debate over the shirt, pant, shoe combination. Which cereal will we pour into which bowl? Prior to this we had to make a decision at the grocery about which cereal to purchase. There was an entire aisle full of different brands and several varieties within each of those. Likewise we had to determine where we would buy the clothes hanging in our closets. Once at that destination we had to decide from racks of options what we wanted to purchase.

These are only the minute, mundane choices of daily routine. Other choices range from modestly important to life changing. What pediatrician to take your infant to, which college to attend, what church to join, who to marry.

All these choices can lead to a feeling of power. They offer us the thrilling comfort of a customizable life that we believe we have relative control over.

But a handful of trips to Africa would be the breaking down of any power illusions I held. At first I gained more gratitude for the choices available to me. I got to live a life of variety, opportunity and potential. Yet as I spent more time in Uganda a growing suspicion began to brood in my heart. I started to wonder if I was the master of choice, or if choice, like in my childhood days at Disney World, was mastering me?

To Be Continued

My 2011 Reading Roundup

2012-01-03T20:30:00.000-06:00

I'm back! Busy season is officially over and that means I have rejoined society. I'm kicking off my blogging in 2012 with a look back at what I read during 2011.

This year was dominated by fiction. I embarked on a personal goal to read all of the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I have a lot to say about that task, but I will save those thoughts for another time. For the moment I simply want to highlight a handful of my reading experiences in 2011.

Most Personally Beneficial: Bird by Bird

Bird by Bird was one of my few non-fiction reads in 2011. I was surprised I'd never read Anne Lamott's well known book about writing. Bird by Bird was humorous, encouraging and very practical. It came to me at just the right time.

In late 2010 I attended a seminar for writers. It was a concise, no fluff day chock full of content, the thrust of which was on publishing. It was all well and good, but I left feeling a little disenchanted.

The emphasis on publishing resulted in an emphasis on selling. How you can sell your idea, sell yourself, etc. The art of writing was reduced to a means to an end. Yes, you had to be able to write decently to get into print, but publishers are more interested in unique concepts that sell books. The writing is secondary, a mere tool.

I know I can be an idealist, but it felt cheap, like prostituting beauty. I think there is a place for writing that is predominately informative and content driven. However, this is not the kind of writer I want to be.

What I decided after that seminar is that above all I want to be a good writer. Being a published author would be swell, but the publishing isn't really my goal. It's secondary. My primary goal is to be good at my craft.

Lamott chooses in Bird by Bird to focus on the writing process rather than the publishing process. She reminded me why I love writing. Through her own stories and honest, self deprecating humor she provided the encouragement I needed to sit down and keep doing it. What comes of it comes of it.

"Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save. They just stand there shining." This quote from the close of Bird by Bird has become my new mantra and daily assists me in eliminating the pressure while focusing on what really matters.

Most Frustrating: The Help

Most of you already know my opinion of The Help by Katheryn Stockett. No use belaboring it here. My critique "Why 'The Help' Isn't Helpful" was my most popular blog post for 2011. Still not sure how I feel about that, but I suppose it's evidence that controversy sells!

Most Enjoyed: Interpreter of Maladies

Lovely. Simple yet complex. Understated. Rich. These are all words I'd use to describe Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies. This small volume of stories strongly features Indians and/or Indian-Americans and their culture. I am a sucker for cross cultural literature, but Lahiri's fine description of the inticacies of human malady is what thoroughly won me over. It was a book about Indian-Americans, but mostly it was just a book about people.

The story "Mrs. Sen's" was a standout among the bunch. It produced in me that singular feeling that only comes when reading something remarkably worded, a story beautifully told. I sighed as I read the last line, and I sighed as the last story wove to a close. I wanted more of them. Very few works this year left me so satisfied yet still hungry.

Best Proof that it is Possible to Write Good Christian Fiction: Gilead

Marilynne Robinson won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Gilead. It is a memoir style novel, a diary written by an aging pastor for his young son. It is explicitly Christian in character and tone. It is the sincere heart of a godly man as he grapples with his heritage, forgiveness, and future of his family. I also think it mentioned...it won a Pulitzer. It won some other notable awards as well.

To be honest, Gilead was not my favorite Pulitzer read this year. I liked it, but did not love it. Yet in a literary universe where Christian fiction predominately showcases saccharine plot lines starring women wearing bonnets, it was triumphant to read a REAL piece of Christian produced literature, a piece of Christian literature that won prominent praise in wide literary culture at that!

Best Overall: A Visit from the Goon Squad

I didn't want to read Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. The title and the concept were not appealing, but it won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize so it was inevitable.

You shouldn't judge a book by it's title. Or description. If I had not been a prize winner I would have missed out on Goon Squad. That would have been a shame.

Out of every book I read this year Goon Squad was without a doubt the most exquisite. I cannot say that I loved it for the same reason that I love other great books. I deeply admire it for the literary accomplishment that it is.

I would not recommend A Visit from the Goon Squad to most readers. The extremely mixed reviews on Amazon.com testify that this book is controversial. I think many would be put off by aspects of the content and characters, but most who dislike it just find it plain weird. A Visit from the Goon Squad is certainly not traditional or conventional.

Some argue that Goon Squad isn't a novel at all, just a collection of related short stories. It jumps from character to character, leaping through time and perspective, shifting tense and narrator as it goes. Two main characters and a very solid directional theme hold all of these together, though. I call it a novel.

It was the unique nature of Goon Squad that left me spellbound. It was an inspired reflection of our time both in content and style. As I read it I couldn't help but think, this is the literature of NOW. Each time I picked up my copy I was eager to see what Egan would do next. Her work was gutsy, pioneering and could have been a dismal failure. It takes a real master to execute something so original yet so classic.

There is an entire chapter written in power point slides. Powerpoint! To some this may seem like a cheap postmodern gimmick, but I couldn't help but love it. As I read this section I was emotionally moved and kept reminding myself that all I was reading was a bunch of diagrams. To accomplish character development through shapes and handfuls of words? Impressive.

Goon Squad also had an effect upon me that I am certain the author didn't intend. It made me desperately glad to have Jesus. There is a realism of pain, disappointment and hopelessness running through the pages. The Safari chapter in particular had a profound impact upon me. The effect of time and the consequences of choices/actions were presented with such tragic truthfulness. This may depress others, but it infused me. I became more grateful for the life I have in Christ.

It also renewed my desire to see others find life in Him as well.

What about you? What did you read in 2011? Anything you'd recommend or recommend others to stay away from? I'd love to hear about it!

You can also keep up with my 2012 reading in the Shelfari widget in the sidebar of this blog!

A View from the Shoulder

2011-12-31T23:00:00.001-06:00

Sitting in a moving car it is easy to have the perception that you aren't going very fast at all. The flow of traffic gives the appearance of moderate motion. This is especially true on long journeys where there is little stopping and starting and the cars beside you glide along comfortably.

It isn't until you are parked on the shoulder that you realize how quickly all the cars are passing.

Another year has come to an end. It is on days like this where we pull over to the side of the road and glimpse just how fast time moves. These days are precious in gaining perspective. We step outside the fray and remind ourselves to be aware of where we are because the miles are moving faster than we expected.

Tonight I tucked Vivian into bed and dusted off a memory of a baby and a crib that feels ancient now. I stayed beside her, gazing down, realizing that this present crisp reality of her girlhood will soon become another shadow I must pull from the vault of my past. Always pulling as I move faster and further away from the place I am at now.

I want to steal her as I have her and hide her away where she'll never leave me. But she went to bed, and I closed the door. In the morning she will rise and in the evening I will put her to bed again. Unspectacular bookends for everything significant.

I am not good at being where I am. I am always waiting for what's ahead or longing for where I was.

I want to remain outside of the traffic and be nowhere, but I can't. It is impossible to linger on the shoulder. If we do we lose the life we are trying to save. Besides, we have no choice. We must keep moving.

The speed of time cannot be altered, but we can make a point not to drift through it or forget just how little of it we have.

If I can learn to open myself wide to take in all of the unfolding scenery directly around me I can better preserve its potency. By being as present as I can be now I will be better able to recall on the days I wish to remember. And the future isn't a place I can ever reach. Trying to live there only takes energy I could be using to be inside the time I have been given.

This year I am still learning the lesson of being alert, of being right where I am right now. I am a slow learner in this, but thankfully God is patient.

Photo Credit

Streams in the Consciousness

2011-12-14T09:48:00.001-06:00

I sat down to blog because I haven't blogged in so long and this is what came out. Total random stream of consciousnesses. No editing! Cheers.

I am sick but I am not sure with what. I cough sometimes. My throat hurts sometimes. I feel like someone crumpled all my insides into an olive jar then stretched them across my driveway. I am healthy enough to function, but the functioning is subpar at best.

I have gone weeks without writing or reading much of anything. This combined with the 4:45 sunset, dropping temperatures and a mysterious illness I can't seem to shake have left me mopey and exhausted.

Because I am who I am I overcompensated for my reading hiatus by checking out 8 books from the library yesterday. I have a personal goal to read all of the Pulitzer Prize fiction winners before the end of 2012. At the rate I'm moving I may have this done by summer which leaves me to wonder if I should then progress to National Book Award fiction winners or read The Pulitzer finalists. Thoughts?

I picked up Interpreter of Maladies from my stack yesterday after setting aside Empire Falls for a while. Empire Falls was fat and set in Maine. I realized two pages into the introduction that I already read four novels set in Maine this year. I needed a vacation. Besides, I own Empire Falls which means there is no due date. Interpreter of Maladies is thin and revolves around Indian Americans. The first two stories are set in New England, but I am choosing to overlook that because it went to India in chapter 3.

I have decided that I read novels that same way I swim in Michigan. I know I am going to enjoy it once I get in, but getting in is so cumbersome. I stick in a toe, then a foot, then maybe an ankle. I dabble and complain about the frigidity until I get sick of myself and sink all the way in. Once all the way in it is lovely and I cannot bear to come out, especially because the air feels colder afterward.

It is December 14th and the only Christmas decoration up in our house is a sad glittery Christmas tree that belongs to Vivian. You may not be able to tell, but she decorated it herself...

This is because:
1) We are burnt out on the Christmas theme by the time October rolls around.
2) We just don't have time to get it done.
3) Our house is the size of a postage stamp and there is no convenient place to put a tree.
4) We are going to visit family for Christmas so I see no point in purchasing a tree.

So we aren't really bah humbug. We're just tired and cramped. And this isn't a new experience for us. I recall something I wrote ages ago about a camel or something or other. We've tried to find other ways to get into the spirit.

I manage to turn on Christmas music every day, but none of that bouncing, exuberant stuff. Its more of a Sufjan Stevens mood in the Laslo house, with his occasional burst of understated trumpet. Though there have been two occasions of loud Manheim Steamroller blasting which involved the collective waving of glow sticks preserved from Aunt Elissa's 2010 wedding. Those aren't the norm, though.

We also squeezed in a lengthy visit to Briarwood's live nativity in 30 degree weather as well as a trip to Alabama Ballet's production of the Nutcracker.

I should emphasize here that I hate the Nutcracker. Not even Balanchine's choreography could salvage it for me. The only redemptive aspect was watching Vivian watch her very first ballet. That was pretty priceless.

Vivian with her friend, Polly, at the Nutcracker!

Why do I hate the Nutcracker? I grew up dancing and for 12 years my life from August to December was consumed with sugar plum fairies and dying rat kings. But it isn't just that I got burnt out. I simply think the Nutcracker is a silly ballet. What's more it will be the only ballet many people ever experience in their lives. That's equivalent to instant Folgers being the only coffee a person ever tastes.

So many tremendous artistic masterpieces are overlooked and unappreciated, but because it is somehow associated with Christmas, the Nutcracker gets an incredible reputation. It feels like cheating, like a cheap gimmick.

I guess you could say I have ballet justice issues. But what don't I have justice issues with?

As it happens every year at the 11th hour the Christmas spirit will strike us and our little family will find some comfort and joy. It is hard not to let this season of incarnation celebration get to your soul eventually. With loved ones, traditions and the truth of Christ surrounding us we will be able to say Merry Christmas on December 25th. I hope the same is true for you.

I Promise This is Not an Infomercial

2011-12-02T10:35:00.001-06:00

The last few days have been a whirlwind! After returning home from Virginia we came smack up to Thanksgiving, Black Friday (KANZI) and now December! I want to fill everyone in on what we have been up to, but I know many of my recent posts have been more informative, promotional stuff.

So bear with me for a minute. I am going to cram a good bit of info into this one post so I can get back to things as usual, or at least my usual.

Ornaments4Orphans has been going strong. I spend a lot of my time these days filling boxes with assorted ornaments to ship out to our coordinators. We are still shipping them out, by the way, so if you want to put up a tree let us know! In fact, you don't even have to put up a tree to be a coordinator. We have folks selling ornaments door to door, from their car or in a basket in their office. Every ornament sold is a blessing to our children in Uganda!

We have also been getting a lot of online orders through the web store! So keep 'em comin'! There are lots of brand new ornaments and nativities online this year, including some special prices on sets. These angels are my personal favorite.

And speaking of nativities...maybe some of you saw the email from KANZI yesterday. (To start receiving KANZI emails click HERE.) KANZI is our fair trade initiative that sells crafts and jewelry from East Africa. Yesterday KANZI profiled one of our artisan partners, Buwembo Yekosafati, or "Yeko." This man is a business partner, but also a personal friend.

Yeko and his family live outside of Kampala. He is disabled, unable to use his legs, but this has never stopped him. Yeko designs and creates beautiful products. He also founded an NGO, Uganda Artists with Disabilities. You can read more about Yeko by clicking HERE.

His nativity scene is my favorite. It is VERY Ugandan. Last year we were unable to offer his nativities online due to demand and limited quantity. But this year they finally available for purchase on the KANZI web store for $30! You can also purchase them online at www.ornaments4orphans.org.

But wait, there's more! (Do I sound like an infomercial yet?)

Each December we do a very special fundraiser called The 12 Days of Christmas. The purpose of 12 Days is to stock the pantry of Ranch on Jesus. The 12 featured gifts in the 12 Days Catalog are food items typically eaten in Uganda. Some are staples, like rice and beans. Others are treats, like goats and pigs. Prices range from $10 to $500. If you would like to donate a gift in honor of a loved one, there are printable gift cards available online.

This is the third year that we have done 12 Days and the catalog is looking better than ever. It also even easier to give online this year! Look for the special 12 Days menu on the Pearl Ministries donation page. The drop down menu is also available on the sidebar of this blog. See? Easy! And you may also print off the order form and mail your donation to PO Box 610537, Birmingham, AL 35261.

So maybe now you can see why I haven't had much time to write lately. And my reading schedule has greatly slowed.

But if you think I am busy it is nothing compared to my dear husband. It requires so much dedication and time to keep all of these special plates spinning during this time of the year. Scott oversees KANZI and Pearl Ministries and is currently working tirelessly to ensure things go well through the rest of the year. I honestly don't know how he does it. Last week he had to leave for work at 3:30 in the morning...twice. (And between you and me, he definitely isn't doing it for the money. The man works for KANZI as a volunteer.)

So if you should happen to bump into him, make sure to give him a hug. He needs all the encouragement he can get. I am so thankful for a husband who is willing to give up so much for himself so that others are blessed.

This is the end of my little update. And see, this wasn't a real infomercial. My husband is clearly not for sale.

I'll be back tomorrow with a "real" post!

Variations on a Melody

2011-11-23T21:26:00.000-06:00

It is a blessing to have friends that love you. It is an even more extraordinary blessing to have friends who all love each other.

I lived with the same girls through most of college and our dearest friends all lived together for much of that time as well. And when I say lived I mean lived. These women were, and still are, like family.

When we moved into our 2 bedroom apartment junior year we decided to cram all the beds into one of the bedrooms, and instead of splitting up groceries we opened a joint checking account with four debit cards. This, for some, might sound like a recipe for disaster. But we somehow made it work beautifully for us. We were knit together.

I am never very sure why these strong bonds were so seamlessly formed. We were...and still are...such very unique women. Yet for all of our obvious differences we are what Anne Shirley calls "kindred spirits."

We sing the same melody, but each plays it out in varying ways. A distinct interpretation of a shared tune, the theme always holding us in harmony.

My sis and best friends the night before my wedding.

Life kept moving and it was impossible for all of us to always be near one another. The reunions are few, but precious. And no matter the time elapsed, it is as if I only saw them yesterday. Some people are just like home. With them seated around a table, many now with husbands, boyfriends, and babies at their sides, my heart is full with the perfect symphony.

Last week I got to hear it once again.

On Saturday I stood in a church pew and watched one of my lovely friends walk toward the man who is now her husband. As she walked the organist played "Simple Gifts" and all I could think of was what a gift she was to me. What a gift all the girls seated next to me have been.

It was difficult for me to see her face during the ceremony seated as close as we were. The face I saw most clearly was that of her fiancé. I began to wonder if tradition did this intentionally, seated friends of the bride and groom on those respective sides of the sanctuary not so that they were aligned with their loved one, but so that they could best see the face of the one who was now loving them.

Zoltan and Rebecca

Zoe stared at her with such loyalty, such sincerity and such heart. No friend could wish anything more for her friend on her wedding day, to be gazed at with utter devotion. I knew he loved her, which was the greatest gift to me, because of how much I love her.

I am truly thankful for my friends. I consider them one of my great treasures, something to be cherished. They are not my right, but my privilege. I honestly don't know how I would do life without them.

On a May day in 2005 I stood in our empty apartment. It was quiet and cleaned out, all of our possessions packed up and stored for the summer. I went to the bedroom to grab my suitcase and as I paused between the tiny bare boned bunk beds my eyes filled with tears.

I set my bag on the floor, raised my hands and tilted my head toward the ceiling. Right there, all alone, I sang the doxology.

It was the only appropriate way I knew to thank Him.

In that unusual emptiness of the room I felt extraordinarily full. I still feel full to this day.

This is my dear friend, Melody, which makes the title of this post even more fitting.

Because It's November

2011-11-14T10:18:00.000-06:00

Things have been sparse around the blog lately. I am well and good. Its just that I fell into a pile of ornaments.

That's an exaggeration, but I'm a writer. We do that. I didn't really fall in, but it feels like it.

November is always the busiest time of year for nonprofits and retailers. We happen to be BOTH.

Pearl Ministries has a special seasonal fundraiser called Ornaments4Orphans which I somehow happen to be in charge of this year. Over the last two weeks we have been sending out thousands of ornaments to our 2011 coordinators.

The way Ornaments4Orphans works is that we enlist individuals, churches, schools, businesses, etc. to put up a Christmas tree. We send them a box of handmade, fair trade African Christmas ornaments which they sell for $10 per ornament throughout the holiday season. The proceeds all benefit our work with children in Uganda! So simple! So fun!

We've been busy shipping out ornament boxes to California, Ohio, Texas, Mississippi,Gerogia and lots of local folks here in Alabama. This is a lot of work, but it is also very exciting as we have the potential to raise funds for our ministry.

And in case you were wondering, it isn't too late to become a coordinator. We still have lots of ornaments to send out. The only cost to you is your time. You can set up a tree in your church foyer, office lobby, school cafeteria, or home Christmas party. We've even had many people sell them door to door. Instead of a lemonade stand why not let your kids do an Ornaments4Orphans stand?

The ornaments are truly beautiful and it all benefits a great cause. You can view the ornaments at www.ornaments4orphans.org. You can buy them online as well! We'll also have some new varieties of ornaments going up on the web store soon! Plus there are some fantastic nativities.

Alright, that's the end of my heartfelt infomercial. I really love my kids and really love Ornaments4Orphans!

Ornaments4Orphans isn't the only thing keeping me busy, though. I'm still running our child sponsorship program, trying to get our fun 12 Days of Christmas fundraiser ready to publish and helping out with various events as they come our way.

In my last post I mentioned Christmas Village which is a massive 5 day craft market we participate in each year. KANZI is also opening two local kiosks this month. Our kiosk at the Brookwood Mall in Birmingham opened last Tuesday and the kiosk only the Galleria is also slated to open soon.

If you live in the Birmingham area we hope you'll come do some Christmas shopping with us and tell your friends to do so as well. You can also shop KANZI online at www.KanziCraft.com.

This season is a tough one with so much to manage and accomplish. Please keep us in your prayers. We pray by December 31st we'll see God provide a tremendous abundance from our labors.

The Kitten at the Door

2011-11-08T23:45:00.000-06:00

There are always so many babies at Christmas Village. It is almost like a parade. Standing by the necklace racks on the side of our booth I watched them pass in strollers, in slings, in grandmothers arms. They all wore their best. Bald heads with pink blossomed flowers sprouting from their crowns. Ruffly pants. Monograms.

I always forget how many babies there are. But there must be many. The 7 billionth person was born this October. It seemed that 7 billion babies passed by me just on Saturday.

Watching the babies all those babies day after day I felt a little something I usually don't. A scratching, like the small pawing of a kitten begging to be let in.

I kept selling necklaces and told it to shoo.

Then one evening Vivian came bounding out after her bath and placed her wrinkled palms on my knee caps. She gazed at me through stringy hair and said, "I want a baby sister."

The kitten, still sitting on the doorstep, scratched a little louder.

She had never asked for such a thing. "A baby sister, Mommy." Her eyes peered up expectantly.

"I will help take care of her."

She was so hopeful, so confident.

Meowing and pawing.

I can't let the kitten in right now. It only claws up everything in the house. If I open the door and invite it in I have to take care of it and taking care of it becomes consuming. Constantly tending to a longing can tear a soul to shreds.

But something also tells me to let it keep sitting on the stoop. Because our pet wishes are not always terrible things, and the scratchings at our heart are not always indication of discontent. They are indication of humanity, a humanity that desires the things which He made to be good. It is not wrong to long for the gifts He made us to yearn for, as long as no longing exceeds the one we have for the Giver Himself.

So now and then I am glad to hear it pawing, glad to know I still feel, glad to know that my heart is still open. And sometimes, during weeks like Christmas Village, I might even slip my kitten a dish of milk.

Photo Credit

Rest In Peace

2011-10-31T23:24:00.000-05:00

I'm not a Halloween hater. I'm not a lover either. Yet there is one aspect of this fear fest that I truly disdain. (And it has nothing to do with Satan.)

Across from the library I frequent there's an elaborate Halloween spread. There are at least thirty goulish headstones staked into the ground, cobwebs clinging to tree branches and a large skeleton draped across the arched entrance to the "Lake St. Cemetery."

It's exquisitely dramatic, but I find it disturbing. Not because I am frightened of ghouls and ghosts, but because the entire display portrays one of my beloved spaces as a frightful fantasy.

I love cemeteries. They are great fodder for the imagination. Each time I see a cemetery I think There's a story there. Not the stories of goblins and zombies, but of real men and women, our fellow human beings.

In first grade our class took a field trip to a little cemetery across from a shopping center. We were on a nature walk of some sort and for a reason I cannot recall we ventured inside the chain link. Our class of knee high souls was remarkably quiet as we drifted across the sparse patches of grass. There was nothing inherently romantic about it. What struck me was the ordinariness of it, it's place so near the busy road where hundreds of people drive past each day. Death, this mammoth mystery that eludes mankind, is always among us.

Somewhere toward the center of this plain graveyard was a grouping of three palm sized markers. They only bore one date. Eight numbers chiseled into each one. A set of triplets without names. To their left a headstone of a woman whose life ceased on the same day. A mother who died while trying to give life.

There is a story there.

My six year old self knew this even then. It longed for the story buried in the ground. The one no one could tell me. There was a distance of decades between us, but only feet of dirt. I felt close to them, close to them as human beings.

I also knew that one day the body I lived in now would be dirt under the feet of a stranger, a stranger who knew nothing of my six year old heartaches, the friends I loved or the color of my hair. My story would be there, buried under a headstone, carried away by time.

In that knowledge I could have felt fear, but all I felt was a calm sorrow, a steady, inevitable weight of knowledge. The scale of life exploded as my perspective shifted. I felt incredibly smaller and larger simultaneously.

I always notice them now, the graveyards. When I drive a stretch of highway they leap out at me, especially the fading ones with sagging alters of stacked stone. I reach out for the stories.

Cemeteries are remarkable places where we are somehow near to people far away. People who have in one way or another impacted our lives by preceding us.

"For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts: and that things are not so ill as for you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in univisited tombs." George Eliot, Middlemarch

I like to visit the hidden tombs to reflect, to search for that same feeling of smallness and largeness I had on that day in first grade.

We desecrate sacred places of shared humanity when we characterize them as haunts, turning forgotten stories of sorrow, love, timidity and courage into frightening amusements for the living.

The stone markers of death and life, solemn and sacred mysteries, are trivialized with plastic bones.

Photo Credit

The Golden Arches of Existence

2011-10-29T15:57:00.000-05:00

Some people eat without tasting. I believe this explains the prevalence of McDonald's.

But in all seriousness, I read a whole article once about how many people eat their food without taking the time to taste it. This article encouraged people to slow down and chew thoughtfully, savor each bite and reflect on the taste. This, it claimed, could lead to significant weight loss.

I remembered this last night as I walked down the back steps.

People don't taste their food because they are in such a hurry. Or they are gluttonous and only want to feel full. Or they eat because they have to out of necessity.

I think I often live this way. I live without tasting.

I am in such a hurry. I only want to feel full. I live because I have to.

On my descent down the steps I wondered what would happen if I tried to slow myself down and become more aware. What if I began fully abiding in my life as it was unfolding, savoring moments, really tasting them?

Perhaps I could lose some of this extra weight I keep carrying around with me.

Photo Credit

A Cup of Smo

2011-10-26T23:10:00.000-05:00

I faced the kitchen windows because they give the best view of the street. I didn't want to be caught off guard. I also stood there because there was a heap of dishes in the sink. In my pink rubber gloves I stood with suds sloshing carelessly, my eyes too distracted by the view outside to mind what was before me.

Vivian came scuttling into the kitchen and set a plastic orange cup by my elbow. A plastic orange cup with a tin lid on top.

"Here's your smo, mommy. Be careful, 'cause it's hot."

"Smo?"

"Yes, smo. It's hot, okay?"

I nodded absently, keeping my eyes on the window panes. She makes up words frequently.

Watched window panes never produce cars, though. The moments drug by. Moments into minutes. Vivian came back in the kitchen with her hands on her hips.

"Mommy, you didn't drink your smo!"

"My what?"

"Your smo. Come on, you need to drink it."

"What is it?" I cracked the lid to the empty plastic cup.

"It's a little type of juice...a little type of blueberry tasting juice."

"Oh."

"And I mixed in some of that stuff, you know, that yellow stuff."

"Yellow stuff?"

"Yeah, yellow stuff. Like what you put on a hot dog." She turned her hands and proudly pretended to shake a bottle.

"Mustard?!" I grimaced.

"Oh, yeah, mustard. Smo is blueberry juice with some mustard...and raspberries. Now drink it up, please." She said this sweetly like June Cleaver.

And just as I began to tilt my head the sound of a slamming car door sent us both darting to the doorway.

Our peculiar life is full of comings and goings, but the best thing about the many goings we experience is that we get lots of comings. Vivian screamed as she always does when her daddy comes home. It is predictably precious.

It is good to have Scott back with us.

There was no transition, though. No easing into life again. At 6 am the following morning we were both up to go to work. Our Saturday was spent at an event selling crafts and sharing about the ministry. We love doing this, but I will tell you a secret.

At the end of day, as we packed up our wares, I felt myself begin to unravel at my heels. I felt unexplainably tearful.

Some sorrows occur when things happen to us, but others...others we bring on ourselves. We pick them up daily, lay them on our backs and follow after. We do this in love and obedience, and when we begin we feel somewhat capable and enthused. Then the hill grows steeper, strength wanes and tears come because everything feels too big and sitting in the grass seems like the best option.

Last week I hung up the phone after talking to Scott and a very clear thought entered my head. I was standing in the dining room when I felt the words You don't have to do this.

I stood stark still and had a vision of my life like a magazine picture I had recently seen, with Vivian and I standing at a clean counter making pumpkin muffins in matching aprons. I had a vision of a simple life, one without transatlantic telephone calls, frequent travel and inconsistent finances. One where I didn't have so many others watching me or expecting things of me. One where I wasn't responsible for the well being of countless children, where I wasn't forced to grind away all my preconceptions and prejudices to hold hands with another culture. One where there was less chance of looking like a fool, where I didn't feel so exposed and vulnerable. Where I didn't have to rely so intensely on others or so intensely on God.

After all, I don't have to do this.

I wondered about this quietly for days until on Saturday, after all the other vendors had gone and we were the last two souls dragging crates out to our minivan, the weariness made it up from my feet and into my heart. I felt small, alone, and absolutely spent. Why were we doing this?

Admist my desperation, walking along our church sidewalk and up the grassy slope, my hand struck out to grasp for the fringe of His garment.

And in that instant I could feel the power come out from Him.

He turned, quietly, and saw me just as I was. Then asked me as He had asked the twelve

Do you want to leave also?

I waited. Then with my hand still wrapped around the threads I whispered

To whom else can I go?

And as the words rolled through my heart I realized that not only was there no one else, I didn't want anyone else.

I just wanted Him.

Life is a crazy cocktail of sadness and joy, exhilaration and exhaustion. When we pick up our cross to follow after Him we open ourselves to a new kind of pain, a voluntary one that says we must die to what seems safe and trust that His burden is light. For whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

So here is the other secret I want to tell you. The power that comes out of Him is not a power to make our calling easier. It is a power to keep dying, and somehow that dying makes me feel more alive. I do not have to do this, but I want to.

I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow to attain the resurrection from the dead.

We who love Him all know this secret. That His very presence is so precious we would walk through briars and flame if it means we can simply stay beside Him.

I count all things loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord.

I want to be like Him.

Where He leads me I will follow.

What He gives me to taste I will take.

For the truth is the only real bitterness was swallowed up by Him that I might dwell in the blessed sweetness of God.

I can hear Vivian's little voice cheerfully prodding me along, "Drink it, mommy. Drink it up."

Christmas on the Horizon

2011-10-21T14:35:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I ran an errand in a department store where the halls were already decked. That's right. On October 20th they had Christmas decorations everywhere. How disappointing! I think we can squelch the uniqueness of Christmas when we overextend its season.

Nevertheless, the nature of our work requires us to plan ahead for this special season and we begin preparing for our Christmas events and fundraisers during the summer! July isn't exactly the "most wonderful time of the year," but we need months to fully execute some of the special opportunities below.

I know some of you are planners too, so without jumping the gun prematurely, here are some things to bear in mind for this upcoming holiday season.

Ornaments4Orphans is something Pearl Ministries does each year. When you buy a handcrafted, fair trade ornament through Ornaments4Orphans the proceeds go to benefit children in Uganda. But the really exciting thing about Ornaments4Orphans is that you can do even more than just buy an ornament. You can actually put up a tree yourself!

When you sign up to coordinate an Ornaments4Orphans tree at your church, school, business or home Pearl Ministries will send you a selection of ornaments which you can sell from your tree throughout the Christmas season! You can make a tremendous impact by giving those in your community the opportunity to buy and ornament and bless a child. The only cost is your time! Simply send back the ornaments that you don't sell. It's that simple.

For more information or to sign up to coordinate a tree this year visit www.Ornaments4Orphans.org or email me directly at jamie(at)pearlministries.org!

Many of you have asked if we'll be doing the 12 Days of Christmas again this year. Yes, we will! Each Christmas we stock the pantry at Ranch on Jesus with food gifts for the children. Buy a chicken, some beans or sweet potatoes to help them grow up healthy and satisfied. The 12 Days Catalog is in it's final stages and will be posted online in the next few days.

If you're looking for unique Christmas gifts that are ethical and help give back to others, make sure to shop at KANZI. Pearl Ministries' fair trade initiative has an online store and we will be frequenting many locations this holiday season.

Tomorrow we'll be here:

And I did say WE. Me AND Scott. Yes, his plane just landed fifteen minutes ago in Atlanta, but the man has crazy in his blood. This is our family's home church so he wants to be there. We are excited to be able to help our cause AND the global missions fund of our church.

We will also be at Christmas Village in Birmingham and beginning in November we will have a kiosk here in the Brookwood Mall!

So mark your calendars, make a note and when you gather yourself to begin the celebration join us in helping the less fortune of the world celebrate Christmas well!

I Managed to Stay Awake to Write This

2011-10-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

Ah, this week. This week....................................................

Sorry. I nodded off just thinking about this week.

Scott has been in Uganda the last few days. Ten to be exact. I'm running on empty.

I had many lofty goals for those ten days. Projects, activities, visits, errands, meetings, recipes, mending, scrubbing, reading, writing. I got a little ambitious. I think it is a way of psyching myself up to bide the time.

And the time was bided. Almost too much. I have stayed busy running here, there and everywhere. As I ran here, there and everywhere I was being circled by a rambunctious three year old trying to shove acorns, raisins or bits of crumpled up paper into my pockets.

I love my child. I love being with her. But by day four of uninterrupted togetherness let's just say I was tempted to Google study abroad programs for preschoolers.

Yet the end of our mother daughter bonding adventure is in sight. Scott arrives home on Friday.

I am relieved, but I am also frustrated that my extensive list of goals is largely unattained. While I'm irked that the house is covered in toy shrapnel my biggest disappointment is that I did not manage to do the personal things I'd planned during my solitude.

I'm currently plowing my way through the list of Pulitzer Prize winners. I have a personal goal to consume the entire fiction category by the end of 2012. I checked out a ridiculously large pile of novels from the library last week assuming this would be an opportune time to read in peace. I imagined myself curled up each evening on the sofa with my books and my notebook.

I have spent each evening curled up on the sofa, but I only read a few pages before I'm sound asleep. The same thing happens when I try to write. I had a long list of posts I planned to polish, but by eight o'clock I'm completely spent. My thoughts become slippery and won't be netted.

I suppose there are worse things.

I could just use prayer that I can hang in there these last couple of days and that I will gracefully accept what was and what wasn't. And please pray Scott is able to wrap up his loose ends in Uganda, get our shipment soundly packed and travel home in peace.

Have I mentioned we have an event the day after he arrives home?

Have I mentioned we're crazy?

On that note, I'm off to bed!

He Was A Jerk

2011-10-15T10:10:00.000-05:00

I thought I would be a writer.

Or a choreographer. Or an actress.

Or mostly a writer.

I was 15 with a lot of choices to make.

At 12 I had dreamed up a story for children. The characters lived in my back pocket and I'd pull them out often to pen a moment. I had a stack of stories with more ideas crackling through all the time.

This stack of stories made me very nervous. I wanted to be a writer, but I also wanted to be good. A good writer.

My mother told me that the things I wrote were wonderful, but this is what mothers say. I was 15 and I wanted substantial literary evaluation, so I turned to the most authoritative source I knew on the matter. Mr. Davis, my ninth grade English teacher.

His classroom in the middle of Hall A was a portal into the backwoods of Georgia. Displayed on the walls were two mounted deer heads, a stuffed squirrel, a pheasant, a wild boar AND a full sized coyote beside the file cabinet. I often wondered if he kept them there because he needed to affirm his manhood to his English students. Now I just think that his wife must have hated them.

That year I trudged through the masculine curriculum choices of The Old Man and the Sea, A River Runs Through It, Farenheit 451 and Romeo and Juliet. ( Not so manly, but lots of bloodshed.)

At the end of the year I had stored up enough courage to show my writing to another. I printed off a few pages, a short story, and stapled together the corner. One afternoon I slid my heart across Mr. Davis' desk.

"When you get some time I'd love to know what you think."

It was one of the bravest things I had ever done.

Days went by. Then weeks. My heart drooped and drained of life.

At last, on the final day of school, I paused in the doorway after class, waiting for all the other students to skip down the hallway.

"Mr. Davis..." I could not steady the waiver, "Have you had a chance to read my story?"

He nodded, as if I had asked him if he'd like fries with that.

"It's fine," he said in his slow drawl. "But you've got lots of time. Why don't you take your time, settle down, have a few babies then see how you feel about it when you're grown?"

Yes.

He.

Did.

The shock bled through my face gradually. I fought the tears down that long stretch of hallway. I wanted to glance back to see if I was leaving a trail of shame on the linoleum, but I didn't want him to see my weakness.

The most authoritative literary expert in my life just told me I was a lousy writer.

Or so I believed.

For years.

I grew convinced that little would ever come of my words and I could not risk more humiliation. But like any true writer I could not help but write. The writing became my secret, though. No one would see it again.

Around this time I became increasingly enamored with Emily Dickinson. I imagined one day after my quietly unusual death people finding trunks of stories stashed in my bedroom. I would never have to know how they were received. Death is a good barrier to criticism.

I would have hidden my words forever if it had not been for Africa. At 20 I started showing my words again for the sake of my children. These stories of children and their needs compelled me to pull back the curtain and express. Their potential gain from them far outweighed any potential criticism I might face.

Slowly I grew beave again. Slowly, as I fought to suppress the words of Mr. Davis, I grew bolder. Because all these years later I still hear them. I still see his profile in the doorway. I still wonder if I am embarrassing myself by trying.

Criticism weighs so much more than encouragement. I sinks to the bottom of us and latches on to our guts. It is not easily dislodged. We are prone to believe the negative things said of us more than the kind things. At least I am.

What I realized as a grown woman was that Mr. Davis never said a single word about my writing. He told me what he thought I should do with my life. He was prescribing a destiny for me based on a narrow box he penned all women into. That year we never read a book by a female author.

It wasn't me. It was him. He was the one with the problem. Because even if my words had not been excellent he could have offered me feedback and specific advice related to my efforts. He could have handed back my papers marked up in red pen showing the strong parts and the weak parts. Because criticism is a healthy part of growth, healthy criticism that is thoughtful, offered with the intent to benefit.

Mr. Davis gave me nothing but a chauvinist's stereotype, but I took it as an evaluation of my value.

I haven't been very successful at having babies, Mr. Davis. But I am starting to believe, despite what you said that maybe, just maybe, my words might mean something.

Photo Credit

Crisis 1 Part 4

2011-10-12T22:10:00.001-05:00

After much delay here is Part 4 in the Crisis Series. You may want to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before proceeding.

I wish things were clearer. It's like waking from a gripping dream unable to connect the dots. Some scenes are remembered perfectly, but the transitions between them can't be recalled.

This is the period my story is shifting into, a season of vagueness. This is why I have been avoiding the telling of it. I am concerned that I cannot tell it right. Not in a way that will do it justice. So much of what happens next could not be seen with the eye. It took place beneath the surface, in the places known only to myself.

My life was bright at the time, externally bright. Obviously I experienced the normal pangs and twangs of teenage-hood, but at 16 the circumstances of my life were more than placid. They were pleasant.

Yet no matter how pleasant a life can seem to the outside observer, when there is no light dwelling on the inside darkness reigns.

At 14 I chose to bar God from my life, but the barring did not shut out the fear, the anxiety and the sadness. I searched for balms in other pastures, but there were none. And my spirit became slowly more agitated. God hadn't answered my questions, but neither had anything else.

I spent out my soul in wonderings the way the prodigal spent his inheritance in his wanderings. And like him I ended up hungry.

Sometimes I would cautiously pick up my Bible, a slim bluish leather-bound NIV which I had tossed to the back of an upper shelf. At twelve and thirteen when I first began to slip into crisis I burried myself in the middle of it. I would flatten out the pages of Psalms and take a notebook and begin to copy the lines out word for word. Reading it wasn't sufficient. I needed to create the words with my own hands.

Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck.

Cloistered off in my room I filled pages in secret, because I felt a great shame that my heart was so unsteady. How can you tell others you are afraid when you have no explanation for what you fear. You fear existing.

I knew, even in my retaliation against it, that the Bible was made up of bread, food that fed hungry people.

Perhaps in my Father's house there was enough food and perhaps if I snuck in softly enough he would let me sit on the edges of the table to catch the crumbs?

I wanted to come home, but humble pie tastes so unbearably bitter. There had to be a way to soften my reentry into the Christian universe, to consider converting subtly and inconspicuously without looking like a fool.

A plan began growing within me, a plan to run away.

I accelerated my high school courses, graduated early and was going away to college in the fall. At Birmingham Southern College I would major in theatre, triumph in my studies and get my life pulled together away from the "I told you so" gazes of others.

At least that's what I intended.

To Be Continued...

Photo Credit

WIC Conference 2011!

2011-10-10T23:51:00.000-05:00

Two fifteen hour work days on solid concrete. That describes my weekend. And as exhausting as that sounds (and I assure you it was) it was also exhilirating.

Friday and Saturday we were set up as exhibitors at the 2011 Women in the Church Amazing Grace 360 Conference. That's our booth...booths...up there at the top. We filled two spaces with KANZI and Ornaments4Orphans.

Conferences and conventions are intense, but I really love doing them, especially Christian women's conferences. I usually get to participate in the conference for free. A very nice perk. So this weekend while my calve muscles were wincing my heart was absorbing the great teaching at the sessions and seminars, taking in testimonies and singing sweet words of truth along with 2000 other women and Indellible Grace.

Fabulous.

This conference also happened to be in Atlanta, which is my girlhood home, so I had lots of chances to meet up with ladies from my home church.

And I got a new book! For free! Y'all know how I love books.

Covenant Theological Seminary was giving away these:

I am excited to see what Jerram Barrs is going to say about God's perspective on women in the Bible. I can tell from the first few words of the introduction that I like where he is going.

It was not only a great weekend for me, but a great weekend for the ministry. We sold bagoodles (that's a real word) of KANZI products and connected with lots of wonderful women.

We sold out of corn husk nativities within the first few hours.

Completely understandable.

And we sold dozens and dozens of Christmas ornaments. Dare I say hundreds.

It is very exciting to watch Ornaments4Orphans grow. Which reminds me that I should remind everyone that now is the time to sign up to be an Ornaments4Orphans coordinator for 2011. The only cost is your time, and by volunteering to set up a tree and sell ornaments from your church, school, business or home you are making Christmas a little brighter for some wonderful children in Uganda.

More info at www.Ornaments4Orphans.org or just email me: jamie(at)pearlministries.org

It was a weekend for reflecting, some brought on unwittingly. Digging through this bin of woven ornaments at the booth transported me back in time. Almost exactly one year ago to the day I was curled up on our couch, losing another baby, and tagging hundreds and hundreds of these ornaments. I wanted to feel useful, yet could physically do so little. So I determined to tag every ornament I could while on bed rest.

The sight of all those ornaments piled in the bin took me to a tender place, an ache tucked up inside the quilt of God's grace. He has been faithful. And I am truly thankful for the little triggers that remind me of what I have passed through, because they show me the God who passed through them alongside me.

Now..

Selling lots of product is fantastic, but it means we need more. Scott left for Uganda this afternoon and will be there ten days visiting with Ranch on Jesus and rounding up our latest craft order. He has A LOT to accomplish in LITTLE time. Plus he's coming off of an extremely trying week. So please pray for him.

I am holding down the fort here in Alabama. So I guess I need prayer too. But I am headed into this time with a spirit of optimism and trust. Nothing reminds me so much that I am not alone as when I am alone.

Hypocrites? Really?

2011-10-09T14:36:00.000-05:00

We had a jam packed weekend at the WIC conference, but before I write about that I am going to hop down a little bunny trail to do something slightly unusual.

I don't write about politics here, but ever since mentioning Michele Bachmann last week I've had the itch.

All this stuff happening on Wall Street has been insatiably fascinating to me. My college major was history and for my senior thesis I wrote a twenty five page paper on mob activity in Boston during the American Revolution.

Yes...I am totally geeky that way.

I was, for a short period, a modest expert in Revolutionary theory and interpretation, and let me tell you, history is not a simple timeline of facts.

So...mobs in Boston...my position was that mobs were not formed to disrupt social order, but to maintain it. Mobs arose to curb inappropriate or exploitative activity. It wasn't pretty, all that effigy burning and tea dumping, yet the mobs were mainly trying to protect themselves and their their perceived rights. Sure, some crazies tagged along because they liked the acting out for the sake of acting out alone. But these were not the people instigating the dissent.

Interesting stuff.

I don't think Occupy Wall Street is of the exact same material as early colonial protests, but there are always parallels in political discontent. And rather than putter out gradually, Occupy Wall Street seems to be growing.

In my circles I've been seeing and hearing some pretty snarky comments about these protestors.

The criticisms leveled at this group are predominately twofold.

1. They have no specific purpose in their protest.

2. They are being utterly hypocritical in their stand against corporations because they are using corporately manufactured products and services such as iPhones, sleeping bags and toilets in McDonald's.

(Though I am sure if protesters started openly urinating in Zuccotti Park they would be lambasted for public indecency rather than applauded for ideological purity. Oh wait...yeah...that has already happened.)

Listen, I don't know exactly what these protesters are trying to accomplish. I don't. But I do know that I identify with many of their complaints AND I am sort of a capitalist.

Corporate America and Political America are clearly in bed together. Conservative critics accuse protesters of aiming to destroy capitalism, yet the capitalism we have in this nation is significantly flawed. Michael Lewis was quoted today in a CNN article saying "it's capitalism for us and socialism for the capitalists." That's a pretty good way of explaining it.

The protesters are still formulating their exact positions of complaint, but that does not mean they should be dismissed or mocked. The spirit of these protests alone is a significant position. A spirit of helplessness. A spirit of frustration. A spirit of wanting something better. It tells us something.

And just as mobs rose up to burn effigies and pour tea into the harbor over two centuries ago, protestors are showing up now out of utter frustration. It was illegal, by the way, to dump the tea. It was theft and vandalism. Yet it is now upheld as heroic.

I am not trying to equate these protests with colonial defiance. Nor am I trying to say they are heroic. But the people of colonial America felt exploited and entrapped. Many modern day Americans feel the same. I may not agree with the protesters' solutions, but I see how they have arrived at their beliefs.

So this brings me to the second criticism. The hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy because they have cell phones? Really?

The reality is that we live in a society where it is nearly impossible to function in an ordinary way without interacting with large corporations. Consumers are inextricably dependent on products controlled by a handful of companies. As hard as one might try to function in society without being tainted by corporate America, the truth is that we are uncommonly bound.

Sure, there are some hardcore radicals who knit their clothing from goat hair and stuff their mattresses with straw. They may not be accused of being hypocrites, but they are widely considered nut jobs.

So that's the alternatives? Hypocrite or nut job?

Calling protestors hypocritical because they are criticizing the companies they consume from is unfair. That is like saying American citizens cannot ask certain standards of the government because we use public roads.

As citizens we have the ability to elect officials that represent us, but even when our candidate doesn't win we still have to pay taxes. As consumers we can choose which companies we purchase from. But is it so simple? What if there isn't another company to choose from? What if you are low income and you cannot afford to buy from someone else? Do you just have to keep your mouth shut?

The political system is deeply intertwined with money from a handful of corporations. Washington is influenced less and less by the people and more and more by the corporate machine. The marketplace is not so free and not so competitive. Consumers do not have a great diversity of options.

Is it wrong to cry out for a change when we see the corporate system we are currently inextricably dependent on acting indecently? Exploiting people? Ruled by greed? Is that class warfare? Really?

If I own a car am I not allowed to make demands about how that car is made and marketed? I could take my business elsewhere. But what if there isn't elsewhere?

The point I want to make is that these issues are complicated and we need to be more compassionate. Labeling anyone, the protesters OR the rich, is dangerous and prevents us from entering into lives the way Jesus does.

(Though Jesus did have a lot more to say about the rich than He did the poor. Specifically something about a camel and a needle...)

As Christians I believe what we say is vitally important in these trying, uncertain times.

Most people would identify Christians more closely with capitalism and conservatism than with charity and sacrifice. They hear us championing economic principles that defend the freedom of others to make themselves rich, but do they see us making ourselves poor so that others might become rich? (2 Corinthians 8)

Because that's the Kingdom way. And the government is not the means of bringing the Kingdom. Yet many outside the church see the government as their best hope. What is the church doing to show them a greater hope?

Or have we also bought into the idea that the government is our best hope and forgotten that His Kingdom is not of this world?

So how about you? What do you think about Occupy Wall Street? How do you think Christians should react to the political and economic difficulties facing America? Feels free to disagree with me. Dissent is patriotic!

Photo Credit

Living Like Laslos

2011-10-06T21:28:00.001-05:00

Isn't this lovely?

I know the morning sunlight obscures it a bit, but this is what I see each time I enter or exit my front door. It's a bittersweet wreath that Scott made. Yes, my husband's crafty like that. He used to make and sell exquisite Christmas wreaths when he lived in Chicago. For our December wedding he created evergreen centerpieces and table displays. It's oaky if you're jealous.

Birmingham is not very friendly to wreaths and other Christmas greenery, but bittersweet does just fine. Last week when we were at the East Ridge Missions Conference in Chattanooga we swung past some familiar haunts on Lookout Mountain. Scott parked us, then traipsed off into the forest with his pruning shears.

This is what he came back with.

He also traipsed off to Michael's this week and came home with these.

I have no comment except that I was outvoted.

As soon as we unpacked our suitcases Sunday evening everything got tossed into the washing machine because we had to turn around and repack it. We've got the WIC Amazing Grace 360 conference in Atlanta this weekend. Long hours, but should be fun.

And have I mentioned yet that Scott leaves for Uganda on Monday? After we pack up our conference display he is jetting off for 10 days in the Pearl. So needless to say things were hectic trying to prepare to leave today. We had to bring both vans.

In the midst of this Vivian had a bit of an accident at preschool. Her face hit the side of the slide.

Here's what she looks like:

This came on the heels of several other tumbles over the last few days.

She looks like a prize fighter.

And she's in a fighting spirit these days. Below is evidence that I probably let her watch Tangled one too many times this week.

The toy fry pan smacked me once in the back before I caught onto the drama, but thankfully plastic isn't as heavy as cast iron. I got to do the fun parental thing where I had to explain that just because something is funny in a cartoon it doesn't mean it is funny in reality.

Oh-and if anyone has tips for getting your child to keep their pants on I'd appreciate them.

Mine doesn't. Ever.

Life is a little wild right now, but it is ours and we are blessed to have it. Keep us in your prayers, especially for perseverance and patience as we tackle the tasks at hand. Pray Scott has a great trip and that I don't go stir crazy at home. But honestly I am looking forward to the quiet of the next two weeks. This introvert needs some time to recharge! And hopefully time to write. I plan to write a lot this October.

Remember Who You Are

2011-10-04T17:54:00.000-05:00

I have been having an Ecclesiastes kind of week.

You know the kind.

Where it all seems pointless and useless and the biggest things you can dream of doing still seem smaller than an acorn. I've been wanting to crawl up under the covers and call it quits. My single life seems so meaningless.

We were watching Lion King, me and Viv, sprawled out in the couch in the midst of my apathy.

Simba, believing he is responsible for his father's death, runs from home and spends years idling and hiding from his shame. But a great king is not apt to allow his heir to continue on casually while the kingdom crumbles around him. In an unexpected vision Mufasa rolls out of the clouds and rebukes his son.

"You have forgotten me."

Simba balks and says he could never forget his father. Yet Mufasa tells him that by failing to take his place and carry his responsibility Simba is denying him.

"Remember who you are. You are my son!"

And from my seat on the couch I sat as speechless as Simba. My Father was also speaking to me.

Remember who you are. You are my daughter!

I have trouble believing this. I have trouble owning that I am truly His child because I feel too useless and small. Yet I am. He tells me I am. And by being His daughter He has something for me to do. It matters.

When I shirk and regret and despair what I am really saying is not that I don't believe in myself. I am saying that I don't believe in Him. That I have forgotten Him.

As small and pitiful as I feel I cannot deny my God. So stopped at each traffic light today I turned my face toward the clouds and purposefully imagined the voice of James Earl Jones breaking through with the words I had to hear to keep going.

Remember who you are...

Someday: Bieber, Bachmann and Me

2011-09-28T00:30:00.000-05:00

I was running behind schedule. I had to be there on time to drop off the mountain of tagged toys smashed in the back of my van. From somewhere in the center of it all came a plasticy sounding tune. I looked down at Vivian's "purse," a mammoth sized canvas bag filled to the brim with every random object that could be of any remote use to her. Binoculars. Coasters. And a Peter Rabbit book that sings irritating nursery rhymes. I swatted at the bulges, but had no time to dig for the nuisance.

In the swatting a chipper sort of squeak added to the music. The sound of an electric rodent. Tex, the beloved zhu zhu pet, whose batteries are in decline and whose owner's mother refuses the replacements that would save his life. He no longer rolls, but he chatters just enough to remind us of his existence. He must have been buried alongside the tiara and crumpled leaves. Right next to the fuzzy white glove and Cinderella kaleidoscopic.

Tex and "peas porridge hot" in perfect harmony. A three year old's opera. I cranked up the radio to drown out the noise...which didn't work.

I hadn't managed to eat lunch yet so I mentally filed through my recent excursions searching for the whereabouts of a granola bar that was potentially uneaten. Then I remembered the tupperware full of dry cereal that Vivian ate for breakfast in the car. She slept in and we were behind schedule. The theme of the day.

I popped open the lid to the Fruitful O's, an organic hybrid of Fruit Loops and Cheerios. Vivian had convinced us to purchase them on our recent trip to Publix. The child should be called "The Parent Whisperer."

So it had come to this at only 27, frantically driving a minivan and munching on a toddler's leftover breakfast.

I swung into Belk with bag full of things to return and just enough time to manage it. I had bought an overabundance of tights because I wasn't really sure what I needed. I was trying to scan through sizes while Vivian played house under a rack of purses. When you shop with a three year old you sometimes have to do what you have to do. You grab lots and plan on figuring it out later.

Department stores always make you walk through the fragrance department first which I hate because someone is always standing there with a sample. Today it was Justin Bieber, well, a glossy cardboard cutout of Justin Bieber, life size and propped beside a counter stacked with his newest fragrance: SOMEDAY.

Someday what? Someday if I wear this Justin Bieber will want me?

Still...passing by cardboard Justin with his flirty smile and silly looking perfume bottle my maternal instincts welled. I was moved with unexpected worry for this little airbrushed boy. Worry about his someday, if he'd get acne or bald prematurely. Worry about what would become of him once he turned 20 and eleven year old girls moved on in adoration. Behind the facade was a very real boy, fragile as we all are. What did he want from someday? What did he dream of beyond all this? To have achieved so much so early on, did that ensure future obscurity or destruction? Someday it would likely hurt or crack or end. Someday. And I hoped someone would be there to pick up the pieces if it did.

I drove to the church where I was scheduled to drop off my load of items for the consignment sale.

"You're selling her cupcake hair clips!?" Scott had said with disappointment as he saw me load the van.

"What am I supposed to do? Store it all in a box for years where it does no good to anyone?"

"YES! You're selling her childhood."

I thought of his words as I hung the things she wore last year on the rack. I have no one who has need of these now. I can keep the little beige shirt with the pumpkin stitched on front, but I cannot keep her small enough to fit inside of it. That is what I really want. Someday I might have someone small enough. But someday is not today.

The girl I have today was waiting down the street at preschool. I hung up the little sign that lets me claim her and waited in the queue of cars.

On the radio they were talking about Michelle Bachmann, how her pastor will be joining her on her campaign. They cut to a sound clip of him speaking to a group of pastors saying "It is time for the church to rise up and take this country back!"

From behind the steering wheel I felt my spirit rise up in protest, the words of Jesus ringing in the halls of Pilot's palace "My Kingdom is not of this world....My Kingdom is not of this world." Aren't the people of God only pilgrims? Aren't we just tent dwellers like our father Abraham, who moved in faith "looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God?"

I thought Jesus had something better for me than America, and that is what I wanted to rise up and take hold of on this busy day.

I closed my eyes and imagined the cloud of witnesses gazing down on me in all my frazzled frailty. They who "all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared for them a city." Hebrews 11

We are people of somedays. Small and ordinary, grand and elaborate. All of us living in our todays yet wanting and longing, hoping and looking ahead for something. But someday all this will be shadow and the fortune, success, power and systems of man will be laid aside and the everlasting Kingdom which was built for years in suffering and silence will shine like the light of a thousand suns.

I am part of that Kingdom. In my day of ordinary confusion, the Kingdom is being built in my spirit and worked out through my hands as I choose to show grace and hope and love. A Kingdom that exceeds all the pale imitations man tries to construct for himself. The seeming insignificance of my life is actually tremendously more significant than the celebrity of culture or the politics of our day, because I am a member of THE Kingdom. The Lord and all His saints take note of me. Me and my Fruitful O's.

They charge me to seek the place that does not disappoint, the home wrapped up in His light. I am humbled. I am stunned. And I want to run on. It is time for the church to rise up, carry our cross and follow after Him, living like people who have a secure someday waiting just beyond our eyes.

Photo Credit

A Pair of Candlesticks: The Convicting Power of Grace

2011-09-25T21:33:00.001-05:00

We were bumping along another potholed road, squished together like raisins in a tiny box. We'd been in Uganda three weeks tromping from place to place with Bibles clenched under our arms. We unfurled the Gospel like a red carpet in huts, bars, shops and bus stops, asking all who wanted saving to walk down it.

That day as we thudded along I was sitting uncomfortably close to our youngest teammate, an enthusiastic guy who was still in high school. He had recently recommitted his life to Christ and was bursting with a passion for souls. It was pure and endearing and occasionally outrageous.

He liked talking about evangelism, the method of it. So that's what we talked about.

He explained to me his approach, one he had borrowed from Spurgeon, which suggested to spend 90% of your time talking sin and 10% of your time talking grace in Jesus. People HAD to be fully convicted of their sin in order to appreciate grace at all. So hammer the law down HARD.

I am definitely unfit to touch Charles Spurgeon's sandals, but that formula didn't sit right with me. That hadn't been my experience at all. I didn't run to Jesus because I looked at the law and then saw my need of Him. I ran to Jesus because I saw Him and in seeing Him I saw the state of my soul for the very first time.

Last week the touring company of Les Miserables passed through our town and I had the privilege to be sitting in the audience. Those of you who know me even moderately well know of my past life in theatre and my obsessive love of musicals so I am sure you can imagine my enthusiasm. (And yes, I started crying at that moment I told you about earlier and kept crying for the next 45 minutes.)

What prompts the words of that transforming moment is an unexpected gift bestowed on an undeserving man. After dining with a bishop, the former convict, Jean Valjean, steals the silver from the rectory. He is caught, accused and exposed before the people he stole from. But rather than confirm Valjean's crime, the Bishop supports his story that the silver had been given to him as a gift. Not only does the bishop allow Valjean to keep the silver he took, he gives him an additional present, a pair of silver candlesticks. Undeserved mercy. Undeserved grace.

This radical act cuts Jean Valjean to the core. He sees the wreck of a man he is and reaches out for salvation. His life is changed. The bishop never mentions a word about Valjean's sin, but the grace exposed it.

I am not trying to minimize the place of God's law in our repentance. Paul tells us that he would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said "Do not covet." (Romans 7:8) God does reveal who we are (and who we are NOT) through His law. And he tells us that the law is also written on our hearts (Romans 2).

"Godly grief leads to repentance." (7 Corinthians 7:10) But where does that grief spring from? Is it purely from looking at our own failure to keep the ten commandments?

Without spoiling the ending of my own story, I did not ultimately come to faith because I became convinced of my own inability to keep God's law. I wasn't even sure I thought God's law supreme. I wasn't even sure the God of the Bible was totally real.

What won me was Jesus. Jesus revealing Himself to me. Jesus was showing grace to me, still inviting me in, even though I was not looking for an invitation. And in looking at the loving sacrifice of Jesus I saw myself for the first time. I saw my nothingness.

You can tell a person in a dark room that they are in the dark. You can repeat and repeat, Do you know what darkness you are in? Yet it is only when the light shines that they are finally able to see. They see the darkness surrounding them because they experienced light for the very first time.

What I am trying to say is that there is no one size fits all formula for winning souls to Christ. No magic percentage. No principle that dictates just what opens the eyes of the blind and causes them to see. What we know is that it is done by God. And what I know from my story, and the story of Jean Valjean, is that at times all it takes is pure grace to expose our shame.

Sometimes Christians get so caught up in telling the world how screwed up they are that we neglect being the light. Let us not underestimate the convicting power of being people of radical grace.

Favorite Posts? I Need Your Help!

2011-09-22T16:27:00.000-05:00

Not much time for writing these days! But I'm trying to do some housekeeping here on the blog. One task is to create a "Favorite Posts" page! I thought about tossing up all the links to my favorite posts, but then it occurred to me that I would be much better off asking you all about your favorites.

So I need your help!

Leave me a comment, email, etc. letting me know which posts you think deserve to be on the new Favorite Posts Page! I know "Where Babies Come From" and "Metamorphosis" were both pretty popular, but what else?

And if you can't remember the official name of a post just say "the one after you left your sister's baby shower" or "the one where you went blueberry picking" or "the thing about crying." I'll figure out what you mean.

Other posts I was considering for the lineup were "Shadows from the Foreground", my Compassion Series and "If I Were a Mouse I Would Eat..." but I think my motherly sentiment is swaying me a little too strongly on that one. In fact I think my opinion is a little swayed on all of them.

So please weigh in! I want to put my best foot forward. As new visitors stop by this corner of the web I'd like them to get a good impression of what this blog is all about. So what speaks to you?

My thanks and love to all of you. Thank you for continuing to bless me by reading along!

How Many Grains of Rice Does It Take?

2011-09-21T20:06:00.000-05:00

This is what happens when you go to Costco. 25 lbs of rice! In my defense it was significantly cheaper to buy it in bulk.

Tonight as I scooped into this enormous beast of a bag it struck me that for as overwhelmingly large as it is for our family, it would barely feed my Ugandan family one meal! Ranch on Jesus buys bags of rice even larger than this and eats through them rapidly.

I keep thinking about the sacks of rice stacked in the Ranch on Jesus store room. I am not sure how many are there now. Probably not too many. Everything is so expensive right now.

There are so many hungry people, people starving today in the horn of Africa, mothers looking in vain for a single grain of rice. I have food stored in my house that will last for weeks...months...possibly a year. I grasp onto this knowledge, unable to deny the tremendous peace of mind it brings. I cannot fathom what it would be to be without such assurance.

I have to keep using my having to remember the ones not having. Now I will do that each time I make rice.

On Deck

2011-09-19T10:48:00.000-05:00

It feels like Fall in Alabama! For some Fall brings pumpkins, sweaters and rakes. Fall brings those things to us as well, but it also brings us a lot of wonderful work. We're looking forward to lots of events for Pearl, Kanzi and the launch of Ornaments4Orphans 2011!

Below are some highlights of our upcoming schedule, all events which I will personally be participating in. If you plan to be at any of these please seek us out! I'd love to see you. And if you're not able to attend, we'd love it if you remembered to pray for us. The intensity of this season can lead to emotional, physical, mental and spiritual exhaustion. We need to be hemmed in with prayer.

Lifeway's .MOM Conference

September 23-24, Birmingham, AL

East Ridge Presbyterian Missions Conference

September 28-October 2, Chattanooga, TN

Amazing Grace 360

PCA Women in the Church Conference

October 7-9, Atlanta, GA

Market for Missions

October 22, Birmingham, AL

I am super excited about this event as it is taking place at our church home, Oak Mountain Pres, as a benefit for our global missions fund.

Christmas Village

November 2-6, Birmingham, AL

If you've never been to Christmas Village you must check it out! It's enormous. It's exciting. And you can find KANZI and Ornaments4Orphans on both floors! Stop by and tell your friends to look for us too!

This are just a small sampling of where you can find us! Make sue to follow Pearl Ministries, KANZI Craft, and Ornaments4Orphans on Facebook to keep up with our current events!

Gone are the Days...

2011-09-15T12:45:00.000-05:00

Something tragic happened last week. I mean devastating. My three and a half year old stopped napping. I knew this day was inevitable, but I had at least hoped she would nap until age 12...or possibly 14. Unfortunately we didn't even make it to 4.

Nap time is precious. It is how mothers keep from locking themselves in the bathroom with Ben and Jerry. Nap time means you can eat your ice cream in quiet on the couch. And for this mother nap time was how I blogged. With it gone I am reeling. I need to create an alternative plan, one that doesn't involve waking up before the sparrows or burying my face in my computer while my child pleads for my devotion. As I seek a new writing scenario I am grasping at moments as they come.

Vivian graciously fell asleep in the car yesterday afternoon, so with the engine still running I parked under our carport, slid back the driver's seat and pieced together "Where Babies Come From." I consider it a mini miracle.

I keep wanting to get back to my Crisis Series, but I don't want it to feel rushed. I felt that the last installment felt rushed. And I know if I try to write it while Vivian watches the Backyardigans it's going to feel rushed.

In addition to the loss of ~~my sanity~~ nap time, we are entering our super duper sit down stand up spin in circles crazy fall season! It's like in the middle of September we throw all of our balls into the air and don't stop juggling until Christmas. Intense? Yes. But kind of fun, too. We have lots of great opportunities in store for the ministry and the business! I'll be putting up a post this weekend about some of the things we are doing and places we are going. That is, if I can find a moment.

In the mean time pray that I don't lock myself in the bathroom with my notebook!

Photo Credit

"Where Babies Come From"

2011-09-14T16:34:00.001-05:00

I love driving past St. Vincent's in the dark. When we pass this way Vivian always exclaims "There's our buildings!" Ours because we were both born there. Hers especially because there is a large "V" on one side.

In daylight the brick towers are ordinary enough, but after dusk they become magical. The shadowed walls of the Women's and Children's Center press against 280 like dance partners. The contrast between the air and the structure fails and the burning boxes of window-light hang like geometric stars. They peer down over the busy rush of cars, sage like, while the passing traffic never pauses to honor the newness slipping into their midst, mere yards apart.

Behind those shining panes is the beginning. I always hold my breath to listen for the cry of labor, for the huffing and straining and first crackly cry of life.

I get this same feeling when I crease back the front cover of an undiscovered novel. Expectant, hesitant and hopeful.

There are endless possibilities, both good and bad. Millions of potential details, notes able to be combined into unique symphonies of experience, fear, failure, ecstasy, enthusiasm, pain and joy. I used to worry that one day we would run out of songs because we had exhausted all the possible combinations. But it hasn't happened yet.

Each time I drive by in the twilight I pray for the tiny chords first striking in those hospital rooms. The ones who will fuss. The ones that will sleep like coma patients. The future bullies. The future bullied. The ones allergic to soy. The boy who will have his heart broken on the fifth grade playground. The girl whose pigtails will always be too taught behind her ears. The ones who will be afraid of yellow jackets. Afraid of water. Afraid to live. The reckless ones. The bankers. The teachers. The firemen. The janitors. For those who love them now, those who will come love them and those they will love in return.

As I pray the days and years of their lives stretch out before me like the lines on the highway or like the faint stars fighting to be seen over the city. And I know that just beyond and above there is God, just as I know He is behind the lit windows.

Photo Credit

Aibileen's Reading List

2011-09-09T14:09:00.001-05:00

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...

Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Last month I wrote a critique of the popular book, The Help, hoping to draw a bit of attention to what I thought were weak (and even damaging) aspects of the novel. I received lots of feedback and food for thought and am now finally getting to my promised follow up post!

Those of you who loved and defended the book expressed how much you appreciated learning about the civil rights era and racial discrimination in our country. If The Help is a gateway into further compassion, understanding and growth then I am glad you picked it up. But take another step. If you appreciated how The Help forced you into someone else's shoes I would encourage you to keep walking.

One of my loudest complaints in my critique was that "The Help seems to suggest that black people need white people to tell their stories." I am concerned that white women (clearly the main audience of the novel) will come away from The Help thinking they have identified with black women. The truth is they have connected with a white woman's depiction of black women. I think Stockett's portrayals are well meaning, but as she admits herself..."these are not her stories to tell."

So whose are they?

The following are works of literature, most considered to be American classics, written by African-American women. These are exquisite works full of nuanced characters living complex lives. I'd go pick them up at the library for Aibileen. I'd suggest you pick them up for yourself as well.

Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston

This is a novel about the dynamics between men and women, love and loss, having and not having. Zora Neale Hurston was a pioneer in the field of African American literature, a folklorist and anthropologist. I'd also recommend many of her essays. While her fiction was greatly criticized by her contemporaries, her works have withstoode the test of time and are now deeply respected.

It is interesting to note that Hurston had to work as a maid in the latter years of her life and was buried in an unmarked grave after her death. Author Alice Walker (see below) later went on a quest to try to identify Hurston's grave.

A Raisin in the Sun (1959) by Lorraine Hansberry

"What happens to a dream deferred?" Lorraine Hansberry artfully addresses the question posed in Langston Hugh's poem in her acclaimed play A Raisin in the Sun. I have a great passion for this play. What is said is just as powerful as what isn't said. I never get tired of the exceptional realness of the Younger family and watching Walter Lee, Jr. "come into his manhood."

Since Ms. Hansberry intended her words to be acted out I'd not only recommend reading the play, I'd also suggest watching it. A film version starring the original Broadway cast released in 1961. If you are only going to watch one version, watch this one. In 2008 a television adaptation was produced. To be honest, I disliked it. Too many liberties were taken, the intensity watered down and I couldn't overcome the sentimental music always dragging underneath the dialogue. It showcases some powerful female actresses, but Sean Combs (a.k.a P. Diddy) couldn't even touch the sandals of Sidney Poitier who triumphs as the original Walter Lee, Jr.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) by Maya Angelou

The title alone is poetry, which is to be expected of a memoir by one of America's most eloquent poets. Caged Bird is an American classic, the story of a gifted little girl growing up in impossible circumstances. It is difficult to read, intense and upsetting. This is the kind of book that tears you up into little bits then pieces you back together in a new way. Ultimately I think this is what good books do.

The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker

The Color Purple could easily be called "controversial." Yet it is a Pullitzer Prize winner AND a recipient of the National Book Award. I believe it deserved both. While I am not going to stand up and proclaim my allegiance to it's teachings, I cannot deny it's beautiful ability to describe human nature, human growth and human dignity. It is a masterful story masterfully told. It is a book I'd recommend to mature readers.

If you should read it, pay attention to Sophia. She makes Minnie look like a kitten. Tune in closely at the end to the relationship between Sophia and the white girl she raised. In this aspect Walker challenges me more in the course of several pages than Stockett did over the course of her entire book.

Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison

I first read Beloved in college. All I could think was "I have no idea what this woman is doing, but whatever it is it is brilliant." Beloved won the Pullitzer Prize so I wasn't the only one who thought so. It is a novel with an intensely unique voice. Chillingly beautiful in theme and style. Mythic, mysterious and altogether it's own thing.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky (2010) by Heidi W. Durrow

A debut novel and a very good one, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky is the antithesis to The Help in that it is completely character (not plot) driven. I read it this spring and chose it for it's rich, nuanced portrayal of the complexities of race and identity. The author and her main character, Rachel, are biracial and she explored the theme so gracefully and honestly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I love how stories are able to pull the insides out of people's outsides and teach us without teaching us. They connect us. The beauty of the above works is their all encompassing humanity. I'm a skinny middle class white girl but I identify with Janie, with Ruth and with Celie as women and as human beings. These are excellent stories of people, of relationships, of family and of life. I hope you find time to savor one, all or more of them.

What about you? I'd love to know what you think. Have you read any of these works? Have one you'd like to add to the list?

Metaphors in Monsoons and Down Wires

2011-09-07T14:39:00.000-05:00

We drove home in a monsoon. The water hit the windshield in sheets and puddles slid around the interstate like pucks on an air hockey table. It was tense and tiring and all I could think of was our little green house and getting back to normal.

I exhaled at our exit. We were almost home. But as we rounded bends and neared our neighborhood we noticed a growing darkness.

Of course.

The power was out.

We sat heavily in the driveway as eerie tree limbs swooped around. I think we have the power company on speed dial so we called them and they said...maybe an hour. We unpacked a bit and lit candles with hope. We waited as the rooms smelled increasingly of "fresh mountain rain" and "pomegranate sunrise."

At 7 am the following morning I heard Scott whisper "Still no power." But surely it would be soon?

Last night after dinner we drove home expecting darkness. Yet as we approached our block we saw light after light brightly shining through damp window panes. My tired heart fluttered like a baby bird, but the minute we turned onto our street it hit the asphalt. Our circle was still in blackness. An hour has now turned into forty two with the possibility of forty two more.

The unglamorous truth is that I have a bad attitude.

The whole situation touches a nerve. I sit on our sofa in utter silence, a powerless house inside a powerless house. I don't work and neither does anything around me. I absentmindedly flick the switch in the bedroom expecting a light to flicker on before I remember that nothing is connected.

I have passed through a torrent and find myself like a green little house perched on a dark hill, surrounded by other's porch lights.

But in the near distance I know trucks are coming. Tree limbs are being trimmed, poles erected, wires strung and connected. I don't see it from my door but trust that things are happening outside my home to repair the damage and restore the loss. I just have to be patient and do what I can.

The lights will come back on eventually.

Photo Credit

Celebrate Freedom

2011-09-01T11:20:00.000-05:00

In light of recent events I'm delaying the posts I had planned for this week. My heart is heavy with the death of a family friend and my hands are busy getting ready for an event this weekend. We'll be at Celebrate Freedom in Marietta, GA this Saturday. Celebrate Freedom is FREE Christian concert featuring some major bands. We'll be there representing Pearl Ministries, selling KANZI merchandise and promoting Ornaments4Orphans! If you're planning to attend make sure to find us!

Next week I'll continue with my Crisis 1 series and do a follow up on my critique of The Help.

I hope everyone has a safe, blessed and fruitful labor day weekend.

Breaking and Binding

2011-08-31T19:27:00.002-05:00

Some death comes gradually. You see it as a shoreline, and watch a man move slowly toward it as you wonder and hope that the tide will turn. During your watching you begin to let go. You remember, you appreciate, and you prepare while stretching your arms across the widening waves.

But not all death is this way. Some death comes suddenly. Shockingly sudden. One moment you are hand in hand. You are doing the dishes, making grocery lists and planning dinner for the weekend. Then you blink and the one you love is gone. Your eyes search the shoreline in vain for one last glimpse of them. There was no time to prepare.

Death parts people, but it also draws them together. When death comes we rush with our arms widespread to try to fill a hole to keep a ship from sinking. Dozens, even hundreds of lives weave together to try to be present because one life is gone. But the hole is not filled. It cannot be. That is the miracle of life. That every life is irreplaceable.

In the earliest hours of Monday morning friends of mine lost a daddy and a husband. This was the ripping sort of death. The kind no one sees coming. I feel shaken. I feel shaken watching them shake. Sitting around their dining table last night over chicken salad and fruit I watched their full faces. Faces full of everything you can feel. How can someone be so full and so empty at the same time?

Today all I can think of is my two friends curled beside their mother on the master bed. Pieced together like shattered vases, trying to make something whole. I think of them and cry. I cry at the utterly unexpected parting. At the finality. For their pain. I also cry as I see all the unexpected uniting, the drawing together and the outpouring of love.

Death breaks so much apart, but also binds so much together.

Photo Credit

Metamorphosis

2011-08-26T17:38:00.001-05:00

It's like admitting something.

There are bins opened across my living room. Bins full of flannel blankets. Of tiny pastel clothes. Of teething rings. Dainty shoes. Bins full of memory. I stare down into them cautiously and I breathe in.

These are the things I held onto. Things I thought I would need. Things I saved for people who came, but left before they arrived.

Each year I open these bins. Each year, after a little more time has passed I dig through their contents with resolve. Each year I remove one thing. Five things. Seven. Now the excess is gone. There is not much left. Only that which is truly important.

"I am getting rid of more baby things," I say hastily to my mother through the cell phone. There is a sponge in my hand and I bear down into the counter, rubbing the same stain in tiny circles.

"You know there is another bin at our house," she answers.

"Yeah, I know." I lie casually as I lean harder into the Formica.

I didn't know.

I tell my mom they should sell the pink toddler car seat they had for Vivian.

"What if your sister has a girl next time?"

I pause. She does not suppose that I will be next. That I will have a girl. She means nothing by it, but the nothing in it signifies everything.

It's like admitting something.

I close my lighter bins and breathe.

We are on our way to Atlanta. Stopped at a red light I turn my head back toward the silence in the minivan behind me. Vivian is looking down at a book about vegetables. Content. Quiet. Alone. The emptiness of all the seats mocks me until I turn back to catch my eyes in the rear-view mirror. They are a stranger's, tired and tearful.

I feel a push from within me. A stretching, pulling movement from a bolder woman. I have been trying to live in the woman I wanted to be. In the life I wanted to have. Wrapping myself tightly, binding myself in, unable to let go.

We long to fit inside of those people. Those imaginary cocoons that we craft for ourselves. The safe people we thought we would be snuggled beside the precious things we thought we would have.

Inside a fuller, larger and more honest woman struggles against my paper thin constructions. She wants me to let her out.

I know I have to make room. I know I have to make room for the life I have, not the one I am wanting. The things I use, not those I want to use. Contents from the insides of my bins rest in boxes behind me and we keep driving.

"I have baby toys and books if you'd like them," I tell my sister across my parent's living room.

My sister lifts Asher's milky white limbs onto her shoulder, patting and cooing like doves. They are perfect. My sister oozes with nurture, giving herself as her son, knowing so little yet so much tilts his tiny newborn head into her neck. Vivian sets down her string of lacing beads and watches my sister sharply, coming closer to study the subtleties and nuances of motherhood. She knows little of babies. These are new skills. Skills she has not learned from me.

Back at home she recovers her plastic baby from the bottom of a forgotten heap. The baby I bought her for a quarter and filled with water to convince her to use the potty. She gazes adoringly into her perpetually open eyes with fresh interest.

"Vivian, come eat lunch," I say.

"No! I'm Aunt V!" she shouts militantly. Then she tilts her head with feigned coyness and hushes tenderly to comfort to her offspring.

"And you're the grandma. Rock my baby, grandma." She drops her doll into my hands. The little peach plastic face gazes blankly up at me, smiling. Always smiling. Always awake.

The outsides of me are tearing and I feel my whole skin seize up in knowing that it has finally broken. I cradle the baby, that hollow, lifeless baby as I tilt my soul toward God. The wishing, the squeezing, the hiding all crack down onto that plastic baby and an accepting, wiser woman flutters out. A woman who is emptier, but fuller. In releasing what I wanted to have I gain what I do have. A colorful, freer, moving having.

I have.

I kiss the manufactured skin and return the baby to Vivian. She doesn't know I have handed her my dreams.

With great gentleness she supports her baby's rigid limbs. They scamper off and curl up in a corner under a striped blanket knitted by Zelma. The books are stacked shoulder high beside their plastic picnic spread out with ice cream, a ketchup bottle and a mound of carrots and peas.

Through the hallway I hear a singsongy confidence.

"'Not I' said the duck, the pig and the cat all at once."

A page turns.

Outside in the sunshine, Vivian, baby and I watch birds flit between branches. They rustle and chirp and Vivian tells me a story about where they have been and where they are going. Under her eyes clusters of freckles push upward to bloom on her cheeks. Her baby skin melts like butter on these summer afternoons.

She darts off after a sparrow and I see a child's elbows and knees begin to push through all the soft places. They struggle and stretch her out like elastic, determined that she will not stay this way forever. I wait quietly, waiting for an eight year old to burst out of her the way we waited by the cocoons at the zoo last Friday.

I wait, gathering up the bits and pieces that fall to the grass. The expressions, the slurs, the awkward arabesques. I will pull these from my pockets on nights when I miss her very much.

She comes back to me with giggles and twirls, still adoring, still small, wanting to curl up in my lap. With great patience I support my baby's wiggling limbs. I brush the side of her face with the back of my fingers. She knows nothing of time or age or loss. She knows nothing of change and growth and wings. She smiles up at me sweetly as though I am very silly.

"Are you happy-sad, mommy?"

I pause as the tears collect around my eyelashes and drip on the hem of her dress.

"Yes, dear." I say with a resigned confidence. "I am happy-sad."

The Atrophied Heart

2011-08-24T15:56:00.000-05:00

at·ro·phy

1. A wasting or decrease in size of a body organ, tissue,

or part owing to disease, injury, or lack of use.

2. A wasting away, deterioration, or diminution.

I never fail to be awestruck by photos from the Holocaust. They catch me in my steps with shock.

In grade school we watched documentaries in history class and I would pull my knees up under my chin to keep my jaw from shuddering in horror. I wanted to shut my eyes to preserve the dignity of the dark eyed human skeletons staring back at me. And I wanted to keep my eyes open to preserve the dignity of the same. What was more compassionate? To turn away to offer them dignity? Or to gaze on their pain and see, really see?

We watched a film on a spring afternoon interviewing G.I.'s who liberated the camps in Poland. One man, wrinkled and worn through, spoke of the caution they had to take in caring for the released prisoners. Most teetered on the brink of starvation. Their frail bodies were so accustomed to the minimum, that their muscles and organs were wasting away. They couldn't be given regular food. Their shrunken stomachs would have to be slowly healed over time. The alternative was grim.

One ravenous man had reached for the pack of cigarette's offered to him by the soldiers and ate them. He hurriedly swallowed every cigarette. He died shortly after.

I believe that our hearts...our souls...are like our muscles and our stomachs. Hearts that are too long deprived of love begin to wilt and weaken like bodies that have not been fed.

Starved hearts are not as easy to spot as starved bodies. But they are far more common. Atrophied hearts are everywhere.

Too many of the atrophied hearts I have seen belong to children. Children in Uganda who have lost those who loved them most or never had their love to begin with. Like the Nazi death camps, orphanages around the world are too often an overwhelming gathering of severely malnourished hearts. Those who seek to love these children must take care. We must take great care as we handle their atrophied hearts.

I know too many boys and girls who struggle to smile. Struggle to laugh. Struggle to trust. Their hearts were not properly loved.

Love is a foreign thing for these children. Unknown things have the potential to be dangerous so they keep their distance from any appearance of kindness. Their appetites are so skewed that these children do not even seem to want the love that is offered to them. Malnourishment has daunted their appetites.

These are the children that need to be spoon fed gently and incrementally so that they can regain a sense of normalcy. As the capacity of their hearts expand they will discover new strength.

Yet smiling and laughing are not always indications of a healthy heart. Some of the most cheerful, most affectionate kids I know are truly the hungriest. They feel starved for love. Their hearts snatch out for it from anyone nearby, just like the starving man who grabbed the pack of cigarettes. Their desperation to be loved distorts their judgement and they give their hearts away. They gorge themselves on what they think is nourishing love only to be crushed. Only to wake up alone and pregnant at 17.

These are the children that need to be guarded from indulgent affection. They need to see expressions of sincere love that extend beyond just a touch. They need to see boundaries and learn their own boundaries to protect them from those that would feed their hearts with poison.

The process of giving love to an atrophied heart must be persistent, thoughtful and careful. It takes a great deal of observing. It takes determination to keep offering yourself to a child who seems impenetrable. It takes wisdom to bar certain affections from a child when you know it is not nourishing to him.

Seeing an atrophied heart restored is often painful. It takes time. With some of my children it has taken me years to see the flush of health flow up from their souls. But there are little indications along the way. I see them strengthening. Opening up. Gaining confidence. Gaining joy. Little by little some of them grow and the life flows back to their souls. Others are still struggling in their journey. I have my concerns and don't know how to intervene for them. But I always have hope.

The human heart may be the tenderest of organs, but I also believe it is the most resilient. With God's grace no heart is doomed to starvation. No heart is too withered to be beyond His healing. So I continue to extend His love.

Photo Credit

Bird Brain: Migration Patterns of a Writer's Mind

2011-08-22T16:45:00.001-05:00

Words are like birds and writers are like walking aviaries. Great human habitats of fowl and feathers swooping through their mental atmospheres. Outwardly there may be no indication of the great buzz within. These aviaries are hidden things housing narrative, dialogue, description, plots, paragraphs and sentences of all sizes and hues.

Writers are people who involuntarily live with noise. They are people who feel made up by words, built with them. Words are not so much what writers try to make happen, but what happens to them as they sit in movie theaters, wait in doctors offices, or wash their hair.

This is not to suggest that writing is something that simply "happens." Catching words, caging them and grooming them is a work of will. For words, like birds, are transient in nature.

Words move with the wind. They seek out pleasant climates. A writer copes with the seasons they way every creative must. Some more nobly than others.

There are seasons of winter which some dub "writer's block." The scope of the horizon is so unbelievably bleak and barren that committed writers must stalk through the snow shooting off rounds, hoping some scrawny pheasant will burst from the underbrush. They bang their desolate heads against the keyboard trusting that some text of merit might be channeled to the screen. Those less diligent retreat to caves to drink...or eat ice cream...or play angry birds until they hear the hopeful chirps of spring. Whatever vice balms the bitterness.

In contrast to winter are the periods of lush uncontrolled abundance. The sky is almost black. Sparrows are slamming against the windows. Volumes of vigorous words soar in such swarms that one expects to see Tippi Hedren darting down the driveway. The cacophony of cawing makes it difficult to sustain and capture thought. But try you must! This trying produces such frenzy that some writers begin to believe they are flying too. Those who believe too earnestly are sometimes taken off to places where they give people pills and therapy.

These are extremes. Most writers, I believe, teeter somewhere in between Siberia and Hitchcock. Watching the lovely birds go by. Wondering, somewhat anxiously, if they are nesting down or headed south.

Words may be flying by, but it doesn't mean they intend to settle down. The loveliest of all the words seem to appear effortlessly when they are unable to be captured. While idling at a traffic light you'll see a bright winged beauty sweep up through you. A phrasing. A clip of conversation you weren't expecting. You'll sit helplessly at the junction of Parkway East and First Avenue North simply admiring it. Certain it is the most fluent prose to ever come to you. The light will turn green, you'll have to hit the gas and before you pass the golf course that graceful bird will be off on a distant horizon.

I live with the ghosts of uncaptured fowl. Sentences that will never be regained. They are out there...somewhere... in abstract form, those strings of verbs, nouns and adjectives I birthed but never owned. I am sure I have been spotted in the preschool parking lot muttering repeatedly under my breath, trying to commit a paragraph to memory, working to cling to the words that came because they never return in quite the same feathers.

Therefore every writer needs a good net.

Supposedly Emily Dickinson performed her chores with scraps of paper stuffed in her apron pocket, stopping to scribble "because I could not stop for death" while searching for peaches in the pantry. Anne Lamott suggests using index cards.

I am something of a hybrid. I use index cards when I remember to bring them. I feel very polished and official when I use them. They are so...straight edged. Usually I forget them and reach for what I can find. The closest notebook. The back of a receipt. While she was doodling in church one Sunday I snatched Vivian's coloring book away to retrieve a row of cursive I'd hastily penned on one of the pages back in September.

You have to pounce on words like a hungry predator. You may not be sure what you are going to do with them once you have them in your paws, but they are yours now in ink (or crayon) caged on paper.

Some captured words turn out not to be the beauties you thought they were. Some are gawky misfits that will collect dust in a dresser drawer until you stumble upon them and laugh. You will need to laugh at yorself that day and be reminded that you are desperately flawed. The reminder is good, but you quickly destroy the evidence of your stupidity...just for insurance.

Other caged words you will trip over while duck hunting in winter. You'll be warmed up from the inside, delighted to discover that your mind was not always the barren wasteland it is at present. In fact, it once produced something quite remarkable. You can gnaw on this one bit of worthiness for days, possibly weeks, saving yourself from immenent starvation. If you grow efficient at producing abundance it is possible to build up a little pantry of words and ideas to feed you during creative famine.

Either way, pelican or swan, each one serves it's purpose. Each idea, phrase, character or setting is worth netting and keeping. Because they are yours. Yours to share or to shred. Your insanity or your genius.

For words do no good when they fly off to nowhere. When we take the time to order our words, arrange them and give them a home in ink their real worth emerges, clean and bright.Writers persevere in the cold and and in the furry and discover that by persevering a beautiful habitat is slowly groomed where words like to settle down and sing. When tended our words can become useful, powerful, healthy things, tamed and groomed so that we can release them again out of our heads, to fly toward others who might be waiting in fields with binoculars.

We Never Know

2011-08-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

I was once at a dinner where our pastor, while praying over the food, reminded us all to be mindful in our interactions with one another because none of us knew what difficulties and struggles others had faced in the days and hours prior to our gathering. But the Lord knew, he assured us. The Lord knew. And might we all hold one another's secretly carried hurts with tenderness.

After the "amen" I kept my head bowed an extra 20 seconds so I could compose my face. No one in that room knew that only days ago I had miscarried another baby.

We never know. We never know what is lurking behind the hundreds of faces we scan on a daily basis. At the grocery store. In a parking lot. In class. At the office. Those we pass in our cars. Hundreds and hundreds of faces. Each with a story that isn't fully seen.

The rude cashier who happens to be in the midst of an ugly divorce. The smiling woman in the Bible study who just started taking anti-depressants. The stoic couple at the restaurant whose son is an addict. The friendly flight attendant who still has nightmares about the abortion she had.

Strangers. Acquaintances. Even our friends. There is so much we cannot see.

We never know the wounds that might be buried just below the level of our eyesight. We never know how we might be used to help soothe them or keep from scraping them open again.

Remember to be mindful. Remember to show grace.

Photo Credit: Free images from acobox.com

Blog Tid-Bits and Tips

2011-08-19T16:34:00.001-05:00

While in Atlanta last week I asked my mom over breakfast if she had happened to read my latest blog post. I described the content and she said she "didn't think so." So I asked her if she got my posts delivered to her email address and she said "Huh?"

Last night over dinner my fairly tech savvy husband told me that he didn't know where to click on my blog to link one of my posts to Twitter or Facebook.

In the last few days I have had several readers message me to say that they were not able to get their comment to post to the blog. That stinks.

So here is a quick tutorial.

If you would like to get my posts delivered to your email go to the top right-hand box on this page where it says "enter email address." Type in your email, verify it and you will start receiving my posts in your inbox the morning after I write them. Posts will appear exactly as they do on the blog, photos and all. And I promise this is secure. No spam guaranteed.

You can also become a regular follower of the blog via your google account by clicking "follow" in the followers box on the sidebar.

I tend to be quite a shy, introverted gal, even when it comes to being online. I like lurking behind the scenes on other websites. Yet I know as a writer how much it means to know who is reading along. I LOVE knowing who my readers are! It is nice to know whether the many hits I get on this website are warm, wonderful people or crazy spam robots. I blog for the sake of writing. I have never wanted to blog for income. I keep doing what I am doing as a means of honing my own words, processing my own life and hopefully helping you do the same with yours. You readers make the many hours I spend on this blog each week so worthwhile! So I selfishly like knowing who you are.

If you are ever compelled to share a post I have written on Twitter, Facebook, in an email etc. (only do this if you are really, truly compelled) there are buttons for sharing at the bottom of each post. Simply click the icon for the method in which you'd like to share. You'll easily be guided through the next steps.

If you ever have a problem commenting, I'm so sorry! I wish I had a definitive explanation for the commenting problems. Here is all I can offer. The blogger format for commenting I use gives you four options for "choosing your identity." Your google account. If you use this identity I would suggest you be signed in before you try to comment. OpenID for those using another platform like wordpress. Name/URL with this option you can type in your name and website OR just your name. Anonymous. This will register your comment as anonymous. Of course, you can always use this simple option and just sign your name at the end of the comment if you want me to know who you are.

I apologize to anyone who has ever encountered any trouble while commenting. Your comments are precious and I hate for your time to get wasted or your words to go unheard. All I can suggest is if you do hit any snags, try switching to a different identity and see if that makes a difference.

I realize that for many of you networked pros these tid-bits are old hat, but I am tossing them out for those who might find them useful.

I have been typing away for the last three days tweaking and polishing several posts for the next few weeks. I'm looking forward to everyone's feedback!

Crisis 1 Part 3

2011-08-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

This is part three in a series. Click HERE to read part one and part two.

There was no hair pulling. My parents, while sad, did not fight my utter refusal to attend church services of any kind. The minivan pulled out of the driveway every Sunday morning while I curled up on the green leather sofa to watch "Breakfast with the Arts."

There was no going back. There was no longer any use in trying to iron things out. There was no use in trying to find answers in Christianity. There was no place for me in it. There was no place for me with Him. I would just stop thinking about it. I would just live as I wanted. I would move on. I convinced myself that it was a noble decision.

I could never really shake off the sincere belief that God was very much real. My new position was not one of atheism. It was one of hatred. Pure and simple disdain for this unengaged, uninterested dictator who doomed and damned for His own glory.

I hoisted my tiny revolutionary flag toward the sky in unashamed protest. I no longer cared about what God said or didn't say. What He wanted or didn't want. I would rather be in Hell, I smarted inwardly, than be in Heaven with HIM.

I understood the devil.

Anger is a powerful emotion. It can give fuel to souls that are dried up and weary. It can give a sense of purpose for a time. It can temporarily carry a person along.

With my new found spiritual position I gained an entirely new disposition. I climbed with determination out of my weepy, pitiful despair into a new world. I had a new perspective on life. It would require effort and determination to work it out. The distraction helped lift the sadness.

I was smiles and songs, once again at the top of my academic class, finding my footing in the choir and drama program and Choreographing successful ballets for our little troop. I regained my confidence and appeared adjusted. The limp, languid Jamie who had decorated her entire bedroom in white...ALL white...impulsively purchased supplies at the craft store and painted the trim on all of her bedroom furniture pink. HOT pink. She also created curtains out of purple velvet to hang on her canopy bead. Life was colorful again. I was colorful again.

But color can be a camouflage, a distraction from damage and pain.

I found inconspicuous ways to channel my pain. Some teenagers do it through drugs, liquor and sex. Those were viable options, but I looked down upon all that as "common rebellion." I was above that. I exhibited my rebellion through ideas.

I read poetry. I wrote poetry. I shunned stupid boys. I didn't curse. I never tasted alcohol. I didn't go to parties. I was a heck of a lot holier than most of the Christ claiming kids in my 9th grade class. That knowledge only fueled my superiority complex. Hypocrites. They were all hypocrites.

It all looked pretty on the outside. Neat and tidy. I was a very "smart" girl. A "nice" girl. But I was only congenial until pressed on spiritual matters. When confronted with the gospel or any reference to it my claws sprung out like those of a fierce, wounded cat. The well meaning youth pastor's wife wrote me a kind card that indicated her concern for me and desire that I would return to Jesus. I tore it to shreds and tossed it in the trash during biology lab. I received religious admonishment from a classmate over a cafeteria table so I went home and ripped out all the Bible verses from the pages in my "Footprints in the Sand" journal. I may have even broken the frame housing a poster of the same poem.

To avoid further spiritual skirmishes I learned how to adapt my "nice girl" image in order to keep religious people at bay. Weirdness. White suburban Christians are generally intimidated by weirdness. Bizarre people are hard to approach, especially if they seem hostile. So on the rare occasion that I would accompany my folks to a religious function I made sure to wear fishnets. Fishnets and vintage shoes. Hats with large faux flowers on them. Pleated skirts from the thrift store and lace in my hair.

I would sit smugly in my seat, 20 inches above all the smaller beings around me that needed to believe in this heavenly ruler. I glared and grimaced and shut up my heart with nails of steel. I needed no such ruler. I needed nothing.

To Be Continued...

Yard Sale Total 2011!

2011-08-15T15:48:00.001-05:00

The 6th annual Yard Sale for Ranch on Jesus at Carriage Lane Presbyterian in Peachtree City, GA has come to a close. Four weeks of background prep, four days of sorting and pricing, two days of selling and three and a half hours of cleanup. These things are a marathon! But they are a worthwhile marathon. A worthwhile marathon that raised a record $10,174!!!

10,174 dollars and counting! (We plan on selling off some of our leftover yard sale items online.) Isn't that amazing!?! An amazing total that makes an amazing difference for the 100 children being sponsored by Ranch on Jesus.

My deepest and most heartfelt thanks go to the many individuals that helped to make this sale such a success! We had dozens of hands come together to help transform a massive undertaking into a lighter task. I love you all. I really do.

Ps. In case you were wondering, we sold the cobra costume.

Why "The Help" Isn't Helpful

2011-08-13T22:35:00.001-05:00

So I'm going to do it. I swore I wouldn't, but I just couldn't help myself. Ever since I read The Help in July I have wanted to write a post about it. A post explaining why I disliked it.

It seems everywhere I look I see people raving over this novel. And with the movie coming out today I can't turn around without seeing a splash of yellow and purple. I read the book because it came so highly recommended. After reading it I could understand why people enjoyed it, but I did not understand how it became a national phenomenon.

So I am going to do something really unpopular. I have worked up my courage in order to tell you all why I strongly dislike a book that I am assuming the majority of you love. I don't do this to be condescending, self righteous, etc. I just think that someone should politely point out some of the problems with this wildly popular read.

(WARNING: this may include some spoilers.)

Let's just get this out in the open. The Help is not literature. Calling The Help literature is like calling a hamburger a fillet mignogn. I love a good hamburger. But it isn't steak. It just isn't. So let's call The Help what it is. A juicy hamburger. It is not a "classic." It won no awards of any merit. It will not be studied by English majors in 2022.

I did enjoy The Help on a purely entertaining level. Stockett tells a great story. She kept me turning the pages...fast. But as I turned the pages I KNEW what I was consuming was mediocre writing. Sort of the way I can't stop eating mediocre potato chips. They taste good going in, but leave me unsatisfied and malnourished when finished.

The Help is a predominately plot driven novel. You want to keep reading to discover what happens TO the characters, not necessarily to learn WHO the characters are becoming. A good novel has a mixture of both...but always defers to character development. An Author must always be willing to alter her plot if what she has chosen to occur no longer makes sense for her characters. Stockett's characters made choices based on what needed to happen next in the predetermined plot. These choices were not always in line with their character. I believe most readers easily overlooked these issues because the story was so engrossing. I also believe these problems would be more glaring upon a second reading.

Example: Why did Yule May steal from Hilly? It wasn't like her. Well, she had to steal at that point in the story because Skeeter had to discover the evilness of Hilly. How Skeeter managed to go so long without fully grasping Hilly's evilness is a mystery. One of MANY mysteries. Maybe this doesn't bother you. That's fine. It bothers me.

And about that evil Miss Hilly. Why was she so clearly, relentlessly wicked? Well she, like every other character, was a sort of stereotype. The hateful white queen bee? Check. The sympathizing, bolder white woman? Check. The wiser, maternal black woman? Check. The sassy, firecracker black woman? Check. The ditzy, blonde bombshell? Check. I actually thought Celia was the most interesting character with the most unusual story, but Stockett never fleshed it out or resolved it for us.

These literary criticisms (among many others) have already been leveled from a variety of sources. That's not why I am taking the time to write this post. If The Help was just a mediocre novel gaining a lot of popularity I would simply zip my snobby lips and ride it out, but there are themes running throughout The Help that I find very problematic on a sort of moral level.

The Help seems to suggest that black people need white people to tell their stories. I don't say this simply because Skeeter literally writes out their stories. I got this impression throughout the novel.

Although the story was told in three different voices, Skeeter was clearly intended to be the heroine of the tale. Stockett should have never attempted to write the story from the perspectives of the three women. (Um, why weren't Skeeter's sections of the book written in a dialect like the maid's sections are?!? Isn't she from Mississippi???) I realize Stockett was trying to "share" the story so that it didn't seem like it was centered on the white people. But I truly think this backfired.

Stockett could have easily written the novel from the perspective of Skeeter and been much more convincing. Of course, Skeeter is not a very compelling character. She is thin (literally and figuratively.) She never seems to grow over the course of 400+ pages. Sure she starts halfheartedly sticking up for some maids in front of her white friends and starts dressing like a hippie. But those are shallow changes.

Skeeter never seems to grasp the significance of what she is doing with Aibileen and Minny. She always seems most interested in telling the maid' stories so that she can be daring and break into the publishing world. She never seems to be aware of the thickest of prejudices running through her culture...or even herself. Didn't it seem that Skeeter used the maids to accomplish her personal goal of getting published? It all bugged me. People are being lynched because of their race, a lonely, hurting woman is being ostracized because of other's prejudices, and her mother is dying of cancer, but nothing will keep Skeeter from what she wants for herself. And in the end she gets what she really wants without much personal loss at all.

Sure, she loses the boy, but she was going to marry him. He was racist and she would have said YES. He simply wouldn't have her because of her book. What would have been more interesting, more beautiful would have been if she handed back the ring because she had blossomed into someone who had richer beliefs about mankind and wouldn't marry a man who thought of others as lesser. Someone unafraid to challenge the ugliness in the world.

Skeeter never goes there. To the soul changing, heart transforming place of self awareness. Of pain, of truth of LIFE. Stockett never takes her there. Aibileen gets the closest. But no. It all falls short. And by never taking her characters there, Stockett never takes US there. We get to read this entertaining story about one of the ugliest times in American history and come away feeling sort of nice about ourselves. We never have to face our own prejudices. We never have to dialogue with these characters about deeper issues.

Isn't is amazing that nowhere in the novel do Skeeter and Minny and Aibileen really sit down and hash anything out apart from deadlines and the fear of being caught? It is all nicely glossed over. Sure, one angry maid comes in to confront Skeeter, but Aibeleen quickly shooes her out the door. This is what Stockett does throughout the course of her book. Shoo the most challenging issues and emotions out the door so she doesn't have to deal with them.

Skeeter gets to do this great thing for these black maids and gets to feel good about it without ever having to deal with the most challenging issues and emotions. This, I am afraid, is the story I see played out again and again in my line of work. I see well meaning folks strive to help Africans. They accomplish something and feel kind of good about it. It may even have been difficult. But in the end they never get to the very raw, life changing, soul stripping places through their service. They never go there.

This is why the tremendous popularity of The Help troubles me so much. You may say I am being nit picky, but I can't help but wonder why more people aren't noticing these themes. Why people aren't asking more questions. So I am asking them and hoping by asking them others might begin to ask them too.

Ultimately I believe that The Help cheats us. It cheats the types of women it strives to represent. It cheats the women reading it who are not asked to search their souls. The Help does not help any of us as we seek to learn to understand one another or ourselves.

At least that is my little opinion.

So here's your chance. Push back. Argue with me. Tell me why you loved it. Let's talk. I love a good discussion. Leave a comment below. I genuinely want your opinion. I PROMISE I won't think less of you. Did the Help help you? Do my criticisms hold any weight? Let me know.

UPDATE: Make sure to read my follow up post Aibileen's Reading List!

A Cobra Under a Palm Tree

2011-08-12T15:48:00.003-05:00

The first day of the yard sale is DONE. It was crazy. I'm not giving away any totals yet, but I'll just say that things are going well. Here are a few snapshots from the day. When you do an intensive yard sale like this you get a little...um...slap happy toward the end.

Like my look? This is KANZI jewelry, but I think our "sale worker" yellow t-shirt really makes it shine. I am considering wearing bright yellow every day from now on. Especially when I am sleep deprived and frizzy haired like I am today.

Doesn't Heidi Sweet look sweet holding this stuffed jaguar? Heidi, a "top saleswoman" in our yard sale operation uses the Vanah White approach to moving merchandise. Carry it around with a smile and showcase it to shoppers. It works.

What are we doing?

Highlighting our most desirable items! A glamorous cobra costume modeled by Hannah under a fabulous beach umbrella. BOTH of these items are still available. Come by the church tomorrow if you are interested in snatching them up!

Overall it was a good day. There were some ugly moments of dishonesty early in the morning which made my mama bear blood boil, but overall it was smooth sailing.

We'll be there again tomorrow from 7am to 1pm. We've sold a lot of stuff but there is still plenty left. Come and get it! Please.

In the Clothing Room

2011-08-11T22:16:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is opening day for the Ranch on Jesus yard sale at Carriage Lane. At 6:30 am there will probably be a clump of eager folks peering in through the church doors, just itching to get their paws on all our stuff. There is lots of stuff. I don't think you can fathom how much stuff until you've seen it in person. An entire fellowship hall is crammed plus four Sunday School classrooms. The stacks of items are thoroughly organized and priced. It would be more appropriate to call it a "weekend thrift store."

It takes a tremendous amount of work to pull off this kind of sale. So many wonderful people give their things and their time to make it successful. Overall it is a very intense and exciting week.

Tonight we opened the yard sale early for a special volunteer shopping hour, giving our hard working helpers the first opportunity to buy. The room quickly filled with chattering browsers and it seemed everyone was in a good mood. Everyone besides me. I don't know why these sales make me so weary. It is not a physical weariness. It is something buried deep, like a dormant coal that begins to slowly burn.

As the evening waned on I wound my way to a quiet corner in the clothing room and began to cry. Sitting by the tennis shoes, discreetly drying tears in solitude while I priced flip-flops with pink stickers I could feel myself hover outside of time and over a moment where everything in life felt so small. So silly. So insignificant. A moment where I knew clearly who I am. I knew who we all are. Lined up like blades of grass in a field so wide no human eye could see the expanse.

I cried for God to meet me there in the clothing room. To meet me like a wave or a wind to wash and blow away the nothingness. To carry me to the place where things are built with permanence.

I could feel Christ's eyes watching from the caves and hillsides where he used to go to be alone. Watching all of us with burning love and sadness and knowing, knowing that none of it is as it should be.

Did he flee for the same reason I fled? Not to get away from things but to get to something. To climb out of the pettiness. Out of the fallen brokenness of everything we touch in order to grasp for the substance of glory that hangs invisibly around us. To abide with Him, knowing that we have no right to, but also knowing we were made to.

Perspective

2011-08-09T21:16:00.001-05:00

Thousands of children are currently dying in East Africa from famine brought on by drought. While fleeing their country, Somalian mothers carry the wilting bodies of their toddlers until they take their last breath. The mothers then leave the bodies of their dead babies behind in the desert sand.

I am currently unloading boxes full of hundreds of dusty knick-knacks. For two days I have sorted through sparkly wreaths, ceramic kittens and miniature snow globes before branding them with stickers that say "fifty cents." As I set each one out on a yard sale table I stop and think about a Somalian child. I stop and pray they will make it.

This may sound a little melodramatic. It is. But I can't help it.

What if we all bought less stuff for ourselves and gave more stuff to others? What if we stopped building little kingdoms for ourselves out of porcelain cherubs and woven baskets and determined to build a kingdom where no mother has to lose her baby for lack of food? A kingdom where no one wonders Where is God? as they look at the bodies of babies left in the desert because they will say, See, there is God. He is there in the hands of those people who call Him Father.

Crisis 1 Part 2

2011-08-04T16:59:00.001-05:00

(This is part 2 of a series. Click HERE to read Part 1.)

A search committee at church was looking for a new youth pastor. The standards were pretty high. This was to be no pizza slinging Nintendo bonding pal of a pastor. This guy had to be serious, in a lighthearted way of course. We were covenant children in a presbyterian congregation who needed doctrine vitamins to grow up healthy and fight off worldly infections. But not so many supplements that we became legalistic zombies. A challenging feat indeed, but more than a few applied for the task.

One blond candidate was especially intriguing. He was fresh out of seminary, though not quite as young as many of his counterparts. He came to Christ after college in what some would describe as a rather "extreme" testimony.

I ate up his story, licking it off the spoon as he shared the details during a Wednesday night "courting session." The search committee had put him up for scrutiny before the entire youth group, testing his powers and our response. He was warmly winning. Zealous. Intelligent. But cool. He had played professional soccer. They hired him.

I was still in the thick of my adolescent faith crisis. I wasn't sure who to turn to as a moody, artistic 14 year old who wanted to talk about the problem of evil instead of the Backstreet Boys. The arrival of this winning youth pastor inflated me with a fresh hope.

It was very exciting to me that this new youth pastor did not grow up in the church. He wasn't fed the answers to the problems on spoons engraved with Scripture. Christ had won him even when he was a raging pagan. I wanted to know why. I wanted to hear about what sold him on Jesus. I also had this silly little inkling that maybe he would finally "get" my issues, that he more than anyone would understand my dilemma.

My mom confessed that she had that little inkling too. So she invited him to our house to have lunch one warm afternoon.

That's how I ended up eating crescent roll sandwiches and sitting on coral roses. He faced me on a fancy chair he'd pulled in from the dining room waiting for me to talk. He was told that's why he was here.

I don't remember what came out of my mouth. If it was a trickle or a pour. I could hear the Jeopardy song playing in my head. I remember gazing out the window while I murmured about my confusion. My sadness. My doubt. My worry. My paranoia. My thoughts of suicide. The tears were steaming hot around my eyelashes. I inhaled them with intensity, determined not to let this composed authority figure see the full throttle of my despair.

I breathed. Waiting for his answers. Waiting for him to acknowledge my struggle. To respect my depth. To engage my honest complicated crisis with an honest sort of complicated concern.

He reached into his pocket where he plucked a pen and began to draw me a very crude illustration. It took only moments to realize we were in the early stages of a gospel presentation. The very kind I had been trained to give to others during hours of childhood Sunday School participation. In all sincerity this nice, well meaning man steered me down Roman's Road and explained how Jesus had died to make it possible for me to be in God's presence.

I was a red eyed paralytic, sitting hypnotized by the smooth, unhesitating tone of his delivery. He drew me, a little stick person, my flat feet nudging over the side of some canyon, gazing at a cross which suddenly appeared to be a bridge.

Curse words were popping off in my head like firecrackers, but I was mute. Boiling up from a pit of anger so deep it could have filled a thousand cartoon canyons.

Thankfully the speech was short. Duty done the good intentioned youth pastor said goodbye to me. Before my mother could even ask me how it went I was through my bedroom door with a thud. The thousand cartoon canyons spilled over into a scream that I muffled with the duvet cover. A scream I meant at first for him. And then for God.

That day was the great break-up. The great "goodbye." For months I had been backpedaling near the borders of apostasy. Teetering on some fence between Christian girl and non-Christian girl. Remarkably it was a presentation of the gospel that knocked me to the side of non. A presentation that was given in the assumption that those who hurt and feared were not actually believers at all. Maybe my reaction proved him right. But for years I have wondered what I would have done if he had answered me in a more empathetic way.

I informed my parents that I would no longer be attending church. I might have used langue to the extent of "even if you drag me by the hair you can't make me go in." I was finished with the holy huddle of hypocrisy, the pack of pat answers.

For fourteen years I had heard about what Jesus did and why He did it. I knew the verses. I knew the reasons. I knew what it was all supposed to mean for me. But when I stood on the back porch of my parent's house staring down at the cobblestone patio, wondering how far I'd have to fall to snap my neck, it didn't seem to have much to offer. All the people who believed it didn't have much to give. If I could have no waivers to my belief then I would not believe at all.

It was time for me to try something of my own.

To Be Continued...

A Look Ahead and a Quick Glimpse Back

2011-08-02T22:00:00.001-05:00

I'm hard at work behind the scenes cleaning things up around the blog. I'm relabeling, reorganizing and setting up some new pages. Overall it's pretty boring, especially for you readers. Yet it's necessary.

I am also gearing up for our BIG annual yard sale for Ranch on Jesus next week! I'll be spending Monday through Thursday organizing and pricing mounds and mounds of donated goods then trying to hock them off over the weekend. This is less boring for me, but unfortunately still dull for y'all...unless, of course, you come to work at the yard sale too!

But I don't intend to leave this little space desolate while I dig through old t-shirts and kitchen appliances. I'm prepping some posts to spread across the span of the next couple of weeks, including the follow up to Crisis 1 Part 1, an amusing romp through a writer's mind and a tribute to a super hero. So make sure to swing back by.

In the mean time, here is a little glimpse back. I first posted Why People Shop at Yard Sales after the yard sale in 2009. The feelings expressed there still encapsulate my love hate relationship with yard sales. And it was a good reminder for me to read it before I once again found myself entrenched in "things."

Click HERE to read Why People Shop at Yard Sales.

Be blessed and keep our yard sale fundraiser in your prayers!

Happenings

2011-07-26T16:49:00.003-05:00

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

2011-07-25T15:48:00.003-05:00

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

2011-07-20T20:49:00.001-05:00

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

2011-07-15T17:18:00.000-05:00

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

2011-07-13T15:56:00.022-05:00

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?

2011-07-12T12:09:00.003-05:00

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

2011-07-07T16:07:00.003-05:00

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

2011-07-05T17:30:00.003-05:00

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

2011-07-02T20:49:00.001-05:00

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.

Shadows from the Foreground

2011-06-25T21:48:00.002-05:00

Every good story teller knows that foreshadow can be a lovely tool. Those little clues, those hintings, can keep a reader turning pages with anticipation. Or it can utterly catch your audience off guard, astounding them and making them revisit the story with fresh appreciation.

As a great storyteller, God does this too. In fact, He invented it.

I have a handful or two of little moments where He inserted shadows into my story long before I ever got a whiff of them. Now I glance back and smile, intrigued that He places so much care in the nuance of our lives.

When I was about two my mom stared depositing me on the floor to watch pieces of the Turning Point that she'd taped off of Television. (Nearly all of the videos we owned were TV recordings. This was A: out of Mom's faithful efforts to save a buck and B: to conserve the innocence of her curious children. She was a masterful censor. Hey mom, why did a hot air balloon suddenly appear during that scene in Forrest Gump?)

My little toddler bottom would stay glued to the carpet any time a woman in a tutu spun on our TV screen. Most little girls like ballet. But I didn't like ballet. I loved it.

I grew up dancing. As soon as my aching limbs were old enough to qualify my mother enrolled me in classes. My dad thought this was a good idea because I was prone to stumble into all forms of furniture. I had an acute need for gracefulness.

Truth be told, I was never much of a dancer. I didn't have the body for it. Some people just don't. But what my early teachers always remarked on was my excellent expression (I'd later become an actress) and my innate sense of movement. I seemed to understand dance. I spoke it, even if my own body couldn't reflect it exquisitely.

My middle school studio owner saw this as well and offered me the rare opportunity to begin choreographing ballets for regional emerging choreographers competitions. At the tender age of 15, I received a scholarship to an intensive choreographers conference out in Austin, TX. Think Project Runway for dance designers. Only there was no cutthroat competition. No elimination. No ridiculously fabulous grand prize. Just the opportunity to better ourselves, and hopefully better (or build) our reputations through two weeks of intensive, interesting challenges.

Like all artists, choreographers tend to specialize or favor one medium of dance, be it classical, contemporary, jazz, etc. I entered into the conference with a bend toward a neoclassical style. What this means is I did a fresher, somewhat updated version of traditional ballet.

On opening night we all had an opportunity to feature a number we felt represented us a choreographer. Mine involved Hayden, black leotards and a lot of pointed toes. These numbers, though, were just set ups. It pegged our territory so that the judges would know just how to pounce on us like a pack of ravenous lions.

For our first assignment, the directors thought it would be ~~cruel~~ beneficial to force us into areas where we seemed inexperienced. Hence what was handed to me on a cassette tape. A musical selection which couldn't have been farther removed from my style, a piece which the judges were certain would have me yanking my hair out by the handful.

A slow-paced traditional African chant sung by unaccompanied female voices.

It was safe to say as I listened to that recording that I never in my life had given consideration to any aspect of African culture. Never...ever. Those lions really thought they had stumped me.

Yet something magical happened as I closed my eyes and listened to the tune crackling out through my boom box. What should have scared the pants off of me actually excited me, it inspired me. I eagerly shuffled my three assigned dancers up to our cluttered attic rehearsal space and began to weave them together.

Patterns. Arms. Leaps. Turns. It happened unnaturally fast, like a wave. The dance poured out of me so casually that the girls seemed rather dazed at the end of two hours. They were lovely girls. Two Asian Americans and one Hispanic American. All dancing an African themed tribal dance choreographed by a freckled, suburban white girl.

That night at the review panel the judges and my fellow choreographers were pouring out accolades. (This would not prove true with all my numbers. I was alright, but not a tremendous talent.) I don't know whether it was the dance alone that impressed them, or the knowledge that it was dreamt out of me, this young, straightforward classical artist. I surprised them. I surprised myself. It was one of the best dances I ever choreographed. It was what I came to be known for that summer in Austin.

As a fifteen year old teenager I never suspected that Africa held anything for me beyond that. It was nothing then. The experience bore no meaning except that I achieved something against the grain of my own artistic skill, something utterly unnatural.

From this present vantage point I see it somewhat differently. I see the significance.

It has always been locked inside. That beautiful African melody that flowed up under and through my skin was the first glimmer, the first sign of a connection to a place I have now come to love. It was in me even then, this innate sense of understanding and appreciation. A beautiful shadow in the foreground.

The sweetness of it will never be lost on me.

If I Were a Mouse I Would Eat...

2011-06-21T16:00:00.005-05:00

I went to pick Vivian up from school this afternoon and her teacher pulled me aside to show me something. I was kind of concerned because last week she pulled me aside to tell me that Viv was constantly lifting her dress up over her head. The teacher seemed far more concerned about this than I was.

Today she showed me a row of art projects lined up against the wall. The kids were all supposed to fill in what they would eat if they "were a mouse." Every child in the class said "cheese." That is every child except Vivian. Vivian said "vegetables."

If Vivian were a mouse she would eat vegetables.

It reminded me of an afternoon last November when all the same kid's Thanksgiving wreaths recorded that they were thankful for their moms, dads, siblings and toys. Vivian's wreath just said "grapes and soup." My kid was most thankful for grapes and soup.

The thing is I just want to kiss her for such answers, these little nods toward the unusual and unexpected. She strikes against what is obvious, what is conventional, and dreams up words and stories that breathe with originality.

All her imaginary playmates are named "Browshow," "Cranchaw," or "Shakulee."

I wonder if she'll be a writer...or mentally ill. (There's a fine line.)

In the mean time we are hanging the strange looking mouse on the refrigerator. Come morning we will feed him a breakfast of cauliflower and brussel sprouts.

The Blessings that Hide in Socks

2011-06-19T14:50:00.003-05:00

Does someone send children memos notifying them of significant days? Vivian seems to have her bad behavior timer set to go off on holidays. Anyone recall how she behaved on Mother's Day this year?.

She was a weepy mess during church. Scott spent the entirety of the sermon and communion punishing her, walking with her, holding her and trying to comfort her between sobs. I guess this is a form of daddy-daughter bonding, just not the kind you aim for on Father's Day.

The episode reminded me that my daughter is disturbingly like me. Generally good humored until an unexplainable, unstoppable surge of emotion bubbles out like a science experiment gone wrong, as if her body is too small to contain what she is feeling. I was also reminded that Scott is a fantastic father. Firm, merciful and very, very patient.

Viv deserved an extra measure of patience after all we've drug her through these last few weeks. We've only been home two and half days during the entire month of June! The last few days we've been at Atlanta Fest. I guess you could say we're all exhausted, especially Scott.

It was nice to be with my entire family for Father's Day, though. We encased the dining room table eating spaghetti bolognese and cupcakes, two of my father's favorites. The entire time I kept mentally returning to that distant afternoon when my daddy first took me to Phantom of the Opera, the absolute passion of my third grade soul. According to him the show was sold out, but he kindly allowed me to pick something from the gift shop as a consolation prize. A few minutes later I'd chosen an understated black baseball cap featuring nothing but a mask, and my daddy was asking me to check his shoe. Something in there was bothering him.

Four tickets. It was sold out, but he'd bought tickets ages ago. They almost had to give my ticket away because I was tap dancing on the moon with delight.

I return to this story time and time again when thinking about my daddy. Thanks to him I still see the world as a place of possibility and surprise, a place where a generous, thoughtful God may at any moment slide a ticket out from his dress socks.

To read more stories about my father read my 2010 Father's Day tribute.

Photo credit Kim Cunningham Photography

Whilst Picking Berries

2011-06-18T23:16:00.005-05:00

Often the most mundane of tasks can reveal our silliest neurosis. I have a peculiar pastime of applying practically Socialist principle to everyday tasks. Choosing to do laundry loads based on which pile has been waiting the longest. Rotating cups in the cupboard so that the glasses toward the front aren't shown favoritism. I have been doing this since childhood.

Today with a large pail, inhaling the swampy fumes of the great outdoors, I once again proved that reason cannot conquer a determined charitable soul. Even when the objects of one's charity have no skill for appreciation.

Berry picking.

A summer ritual I perform out of cheapness and the romantic sensibility that I should have been born on the fair fields of virgin America long before planes, trains and steamboats buzzed from sea to shining sea. (However this is a neurosis to be addressed on a later day.)

My "fairness" factor always rears it's crackpot head on such occasions. Something as straightforward as plucking fruit off of a bush evolves into even more than a fanciful romp through time. It becomes a rescue mission.

You can be certain that you have a drastically overdeveloped sense of justice when while berry picking you deliberately avoid the surface fruit in order to seek out the overlooked berries buried deep inside the bushes just to be fair.

This is what I do. I pick the forgotten ones. The lonesome ones. The marginalized beauties clustered out of plain sight.

Those of you who might have seen a half eaten woman struggling inside the arms of a six foot four shrub at Adam's Farm today...yes...that was me. It was all for the love of berries. AND equal employment opportunities. Even those hard to reach ones deserve a shot to be savored in a pie or a muffin or a smoothie. Berries have feelings too.

So I do a rare style of gymnastics in order to gather the obscurest of blueberries. Passersby must cock their heads in puzzlement to see a grown woman entrenched inside a plant when there are clearly so many worthy blueberries sitting right there on the surface. Of course I am only assuming they cock their heads. I can't see anything apart from foliage from where I'm standing. This really isn't a problem, though.

I just can't bear the thought of all those hidden gems withering up and rotting in the mud because no one noticed them. No one thought they were worth the work. I will work for them. They are worth it to me.

Now before you think I am a few berries short of a turnover, my sense of blueberry justice only extends to the plumpest and juiciest of blueberries lurking in the bowels of the bush. As much as i hate to admit it, I have no compassion for the shriveled, the small or the tart. I do feel sorry for them. But not sorry enough to plop them in my pail.

Perhaps this makes me hypocritical, this overt prejudice. It does cause me alarm when I sit to contemplate it. Yet when all is said and done it is comforting to know that while portions of my personality can cause the line of reason to be thoroughly blurred, I still have my limits.

An Unplanned Holiday

2011-06-13T17:26:00.002-05:00

We did something unprecedented. Revolutionary, really. We stayed in Virginia Beach for the weekend.

It is a terrible thing to stay right on the beach yet be trapped ALL day in an exhibit hall. The hours were beyond long. Our family needed a respite.

We don't really vacation. We're gypsies who travel around the world. We travel to work. To raise awareness. To raise a buck. But we don't go many places just for the heck of it, to have a good time or just be.

Friday as I sat on the edge of the kiddie pool watching Vivian flap her legs like a mermaid, my eyes welled up unexpectedly. I realized that for the first time in her lifetime our family was on a sort of holiday. This was our first trip as a trio apart from grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, or friends. We had no where to be and nothing to do. No obligations or responsibilities.

Sometimes you don't know you need something until you receive it.

Typically we would have felt extraordinarily guilty for such an indulgence. I think we're growing. We're learning that we need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others.

Revolutionary. And healthy.

Random Thoughts from General Assembly

2011-06-09T21:46:00.001-05:00

I am honestly too tired to form paragraphs. So before I forget it all, here are some observations from our time at General Assembly:

1. Sunburns always hurt worse on the second day.

2. Convention centers are kept at a steady 65 degrees. Convention buses a steady 60.

3. A great recipe for humble pie involves having your exhausted toddler throw a tantrum in front of countless pastors, elders and ministry leaders.

4. I could eat sushi every day.

5. The world needs more people like Bruce and Linda Farrant (even though they won't eat sushi.)

6. When standing on cement flooring for ten straight hours, you'll be glad you splurged and bought the more expensive comfort heels. (or in my case that your mother splurged and bought them for you!)

7. If this ministry thing doesn't pan out I feel pretty confident Vivian could support our family doing dinner theatre.

8. Women really love jewelry.

9. Reformed men like beards, books and blue shirts. They also like coffee.

10. When exhibiting at a convention near the beach bring every beach bag you have in inventory. You'll sell all of them.

11. I really stink at promoting my blog.

12. I love books and coffee and a bearded man who wears a lot of blue shirts.

13. My husband doesn't get paid enough dollars for what he does. Though in eternal currency he must be loaded.

14. Our denomination is really white and a tiny bit straight laced. But each year I notice more flecks of diversity. This makes me hopeful.

15. As much as I hate them, I really like conventions.

General Assembly 2011

2011-06-07T21:36:00.002-05:00

This is a quick, no nonsense post just to cover logistics. We're in Virginia Beach at PCA General Assembly. We're ex-haust-ed, but really happy. The schedule keeps us tied up, and when we're free we're spending time with really fantastic people. The beach is lovely, but we're stuck in an over air conditioned convention center blocks away. At least our room came with a view! Lots to tell when (and if) we recover!

Blazing Trails

2011-06-04T15:00:00.002-05:00

We left later than we intended.

Much later.

It was the kind of Alabama day when you need to touch the steering wheel gingerly lest you blister your palms.

Our silver Town and Country was packed to the point of rupture.

We have traveled this heavy before. Once on drive to Chicago from Covenant, Scott's entire dorm room squeezed into my folk's van like a sausage. A state trooper stopped us in Indiana for speeding. I'll never know precisely how long he tailed us because our rear view mirror only reflected Rubbermaid bins.

It is easy to speed in Indiana. The roads are completely flat.

The roads through Virginia are curved and rolling. This is our final destination. A place for lovers.

The rear view mirror still reflected Rubbermaid, but this time the bins were full of beads made from paper and bracelets made from bone. We were a warehouse on wheels.

Vivian was nestled into her carseat like a piece of jigsaw puzzle. She giggled with glee. We have a remarkable child, always thirsty for adventure.

We left so late we knew we'd drive until our eyes turned red. Vivian's eyes would turn red too. She doesn't sleep in the car. She just doesn't. A little past midnight pulling into the LaQuinta parking lot she was belting out the lyrics to You're a Good Man Charlie Brown. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. At times such as this it is best to err on the side of laughter.

We are seasoned road warriors. Our family knows how to put miles on a vehicle. Yesterday our wheels took us to the outskirts of Washington D.C. where we are vendors at a large riverside festival in Occoquan, VA. Occoquan is just a stone's throw from three of my dearest college friends AND Scott's brother, Matthew. So while we came to work, we're also playing.

After a weekend in Occoquan we'll bid a tearful (at least I will be tearful) goodbye to our D.C. loved ones and head southward for Virginia Beach for the PCA General Assembly. While Pearl Ministries is an interdenominational ministry, Scott and I belong to the Presbyterian Church in America. This is our yearly national gathering and we'll be exhibiting Kanzi and Pearl.

It's going to be a WILD and BUSY week! Please keep us in your prayers as it is very physically demanding. Pray especially for Scott as he is doing most of the work.

I'll keep you all posted along the way.

Rooted in Decay

2011-05-31T17:37:00.001-05:00

Once or twice a day I slip through the screen door on the side of our house, my hands full of bits of food. These are the scraps. The peels. The rinds. The things we couldn't...or wouldn't...eat.

All day long I collect them in a little bowl, watching merrily as it slowly fills. I chop and slice and smile as I tenderly scoop up butts of squash and celery leaves. When the onion skins begin to tumble over I take my bowl and rush outside.

It takes me 28 seconds to cross the grass to the compost pile. A heaping, stinking place of decay. I throw the cantaloupe rinds and apple cores on top where they will bake and soak and be eaten by less discerning creatures.

Now and then we will turn it and churn it. Stirring up all that crumbling waste until something miraculous happens.

Dirt. Thick, dark, soft, warm dirt unlike anything you could buy at Home Depot. Our precious garden plots are full of it. Lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant all rooted and nourished by dead bits of lettuce, tomatoes, zucchini and eggplant.

This is life. I love feeding it. For God wastes nothing.

A Rose by Any Other Name

2011-05-29T22:43:00.000-05:00

And the makeover continues! Things are getting even fancier in this little corner of the world wide web. Look at the address bar at the top of the screen. Yep.

www.ranchedonjesus.com

You'll still be able to get here by typing in the old www.ranchedonjesus.blogspot.com. But with the new address there's less typing.

Why the change?

I decided to get a few business cards printed. We are going to be at quite a few conventions/events this summer. I plan on giving out cards advertising the blog. My husband says if I really want to be a writer I need to do more of these promotional things. I stink at promotional. But I am trying. Sort of. Hence the cards.

www.ranchedonjesus.com is a lot shorter than www.ranchedonjesus.blogspot.com. It fit better on the cards.

When I purchased the domain name Google made a few other suggestions for website names that they believed might be similar.

housedonjesus.com
residencedonjesus.com
farmedonjesus.com

But I think my favorite was:

spreadedonjesus.com

That address is still available if anyone is interested. For now I'll continue to be Ranched on Jesus. And if you don't know what that name means, do some clicking around to find out!

Cake with Icing

2011-05-24T17:36:00.002-05:00

The last few days have been jam packed with unusual goodness.

Exactly seven days ago I was at the complete end of myself. We had to send out an email alerting our supporters that we did not have the necessary funds to send our Ugandan children back to school. We needed a whopping $7,500 and we needed it FAST.

It is so so SO hard to send out that kind of email. SO hard.

I had to humble myself and hold out my empty hands before my partners, my children, my supporters and my God. To be very VERY honest, I didn't feel I deserved a "rescue." For the sake of the children I knew we had to open up and share our need. I just personally felt all used up and wilted. Like a flower beyond saving. Not worth watering.

I wanted the Lord to intervene for the children. I did. But I couldn't bring myself to really pray or talk to Him about it in any way. In fact, I didn't even say much of anything about this need on the blog. I just couldn't. I didn't want to be involved. I needed Him to do it for them...but not for me or through me.

Most of you have seen by now that God met our need. He met it in full. In fact, he almost doubled what we needed.

I was so pleased as I watched the donations roll in. It was very touching. What started out as a dry month was suddenly quite lush. The months ahead looked more promising too.

My joy and enthusiasm are normally off the charts at times such as this. But they weren't. As much as I was thankful for the gifts that came in I was mostly pleased for the staff and children at Ranch. Pleased and relieved. But I was not enthusiastic. Not the way I normally am. This only made me feel more guilty.

Not only did I not want to talk to God about my inadequacies, I couldn't even properly praise Him for His provision. I didn't want to enjoy the cake He gave us.

I felt empty.

Then...there was yesterday.

Yesterday God showed up with icing for His cake.

When times get hard in the ministry, they get hard for our family. I won't go into details, but this involves a lot of mental, emotional, spiritual and... financial strain. Truthfully we live VERY comfortably. I feel blessed and happy with what we have and how we live. I love what we do.

It's just that lately practical things keep falling to bits. The dryer. The windows. The paint. The roof. The AC. The sewer line. For the first time in well over 3 years I was feeling poor. I was sad. And wondering if God even noticed.

Then yesterday Scott was rifling through the mail and sliced open an envelope from our insurance company.

All he said was, "What's this?"

I came to look over his shoulder and went speechless. It was a check from our insurance company. On Thursday they had come out to survey our damage from the tornadoes. We hadn't thought much of it because our damage didn't seem too bad. Apparently, the insurance company felt otherwise.

Inside that envelope was not just an unexpected check. It was an unexpected gift from the Lord. A check that shows me God cares. He doesn't just care about His children in Uganda. He cares about His children in Birmingham too.

He loves me.

And even though I am still very convinced that I don't deserve this kindness at all, I will gladly sit down and enjoy this iced cake with Him. Because it doesn't matter if I deserve it or not. He is who He is not because of who I am. What a comfort.

Today I am humbly and gratefully accepting His grace with tears and delight. My cup overflows.

Makeover!

2011-05-23T15:52:00.001-05:00

Tada!

Notice anything different?

I've been wanting to give the blog a makeover for a while now. This weekend I finally sat down and did it!

The old blog header invoked dear memories of a simpler time. But whenever I looked at it it took me too far into the past. Much has changed since the day in 2007 when Scott shot this precious photo from across a field in the middle of a church crusade.

The woman pictured above is not the same woman writing these posts. It was time to move on.

I feel the new look better encapsulates my writing and my personality. The new blog header is actually an old photo too. But somehow I feel more at home in it.

What you're looking at now isn't the finished product. I've got a good bit of tweaking to do...especially with the header. But for now I'm pleased. I'm especially pleased because I did the whole thing by my little ol' self! I hope you enjoy it. I'd love to know what you think!

Martha's Dress!

2011-05-20T13:44:00.002-05:00

This photo makes me blissfully happy.

Remember when we were in Uganda and we took Martha (Sarah and Theophilus' daughter) out for a special day? This picture is the result. I promised then to show you photos of her dress, but we ran out of time. Thankfully Scott remembered to snag a shot of this growing African beauty while he was there last month.

Every time I look at Martha I see a small, feminine Theophilus. She looks so much like him.

Mountains Inside of Shoe Boxes

2011-05-18T16:36:00.002-05:00

I have shared the secret here before. My mother always knows when there is something troubling me because I don't call her. I call her frequently. A lot of times I call her to talk about my troubles.

But there are certain troubles that are not like pebbles or stones. There are troubles like boulders. They sit in your stomach. Or sometimes on your feet. To move them from your insides to your mouth is impossible. They are simply too heavy.

So there the troubles rest while you silently hope something will come along to punch you in the gut and shatter them into pieces.

I've been full of boulders lately. That's why there haven't been any "real" posts in a while.

By now a lot of you have seen the email outlining the very large and urgent need we have for the kid's school fees. I suppose that might be one boulder. Or maybe not. The need is scary and it hurts, but to be honest there are uglier things weighing on me. Things that are not so obvious. Things buried under other buried things.

Often a big crisis, like needing $7,500 faster than you can say quickly, shakes you a bit and all sorts of slugs and bugs come crawling out from your underbelly.

They make big problems look like smaller problems. You discover the greatest hurdles might not be those around you, but rather those occurring in yourself.

I'm not sure what I mean by all of this. Discussing these things is like trying to squeeze a mountain range into a shoe box.

I can't even articulate it to myself.

I want to talk about these things. I write about things to untangle them. But somehow I'm not ready yet.

This is not the place I want to be in right now. Sort of how you never want to be in the doctor's office, but you know you must in order to eventually feel better or even to just survive. I'm in the waiting room now. Waiting for that something to punch me in the gut and break the mountain range to pieces. Pieces I can understand, then cough up.

Mother's Day Tribute

2011-05-09T21:33:00.001-05:00

I considered doing a special Mother's Day post, then got so busy mothering my very busy three year old I lost all motivation. Yesterday was just one of those days. Vivian decided to hold nothing back during church with behavior ranging from the extremely sassy and squirmy to the utterly bizarre. Within a five minute period she 1) attempted to take off her panties and 2) wiped her snot all over my leg.

Guess no one sent her the "Mother's Day Memo" about angelic behavior, gratitude...etc... etc...etc...

And in all honestly I don't think I could write anything "momish" up to par with last year's Mother's Day post. To read "On Becoming My Mother," my 2010 tribute to my dear mama, Carolyn Rosser, click HERE.

"When It's Got to Be Honeysuckle"

2011-05-07T15:50:00.002-05:00

I've been organizing files. It was really boring until I started organizing photos. Our wonderful 2009 intern, Hannah Copeland, took thousands of amazing shots while she was in Uganda. She edited hundreds of them and gave us that disk to use for publications, etc. BUT she also gave us a flash drive full of EVERY SINGLE SHOT she took during her Uganda trip. I've been going through that driver and stumbling upon such fantastic photos. A lot of these aren't specifically ministry related which is why they've been collecting digital dust.

But I had SUCH fun looking through these old pictures that I couldn't help but share some with y'all! Enjoy!

Look at this sixteen month old cutie! She STILL wasn't walking.

"Hey, Daddy, put Mathew down!"

"This isn't fair!!!!!!!"

"Can I get some sympathy, please??"

Kamara

Scott driving Martha and Mark off for an "adventure." I think they went up the road to the gas station. Ha!

I LOVE this photo of a Ugandan billboard! "When It's Got To Be Honeysuckle!" Ugandan advertisements are the BEST.

I'm giving Joyce a look.

Now she's giving me a look. Joyce has never been an easy child, but she's always been especially dear to me.

Scott posing while Mark takes his photo.

Hello? Namugenyi and Vivian with her play phone.

Naked bliss after a delicious lunch of matooke and gnuts.

Anyone else notice Martha's face?!?

I'm going to EAT the gorilla!

Or maybe I'll just kiss him.

See what that sign says? "Ranch on the Lake." This is the inspiration behind the name Ranch on Jesus. This sign is gone now. They rebuild Ranch on the Lake and renamed it Serena Hotel. I get choked up looking at this picture.

Sarah Kamara...a goofball.

Ahhhh Stoney. The delicious ginger soda. If only they sold these in the States! (Vivian spit hers out after she took this sip! Guess she isn't a believer.)

Theophilus outside the dining hall watching the kids sing. I love this man!

I really really really really miss Uganda.