PearlS | The Average Pearl

You want, and cannot have

Rich Man Dilemma
Essay 1

When I wake up in the morning, before I get my coffee or even roll out of bed, I look at my phone. I want to know what time it is, of course. It’s the only clock I have. However, it also has a convenient, horrid little feature where the whole internet appears before me with the press of a button. Like habit, as if it were my very solemn duty, I check three things on my phone: email, texts, instagram.
Let’s be clear: this is available to me because I am a stay-at-home mom. I can afford to sit in bed for a few minutes and scroll the news. I do not have to take a shower or get dressed or do anything besides feed my children breakfast on a summer morning.
To be honest, sometimes I cannot stand it, that I know I will not get anything done today. I might raise my voice in frustration–this is pretty much a given, since boys do not usually brush their teeth or pick up the living room out of the abundance of goodness in their nine year old hearts. I will inevitably make meals for picky, ungrateful children. I’ll listen to a three year old scream for a half hour before she gives into a nap. There will be no checklist to mark off, no paycheck at the end of my two weeks. It’ll just be another two weeks and another two weeks times a hundred at snail’s pace.
So when I look on instagram and see people on their ninth day of vacation in Italy while the grandparents watch their kids, I will burn with a self-righteous jealousy. At least I care enough about my kids to not abandon them for shrimp scampi, wine, and grownup adventures.

I comfort myself with pride: I am getting a lot of nothing done, but maybe it is a good kind of nothing. Maybe dragging them through Walmart and never giving into buying Pokemon cards builds fortitude. They are experienced with folding clothes and digging in the dirt. If out of boredom they have become hopelessly addicted to books and odd sink-plugging science experiments, does that not suffice as a good mom badge? They play well with others… Perhaps it is all related to a mom who stays at home and yells at them five times to get their teeth brushed before noon? Sure, I’ll settle for the consolation prize.

It’s true and noble, this way of thinking, but it would have been better for me to not frame it against my internet not-even-real-friend’s vacation pictures. “Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life”–it isn’t so much about preventing bad things from coming in, but sieving my own water so my well isn’t a muddy pig pen. James alluded to this:
“Do you not know what causes quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.” (James 4:1-2)
Everything boils down to jealousy, and we wouldn’t be feeling jealous if we’d just drop the things that cause us to feel so darn jealous. I might be happy if I wasn’t an internet busybody. I’d be less worried about me time, less ruffled over my inability to keep up with Joneses, less proud of my mundane victories. All in all, I’d have more room to love Jesus and the people around me.

This notion hooked its claws in my coattails and I dragged it around pitifully for several years. I want, and I cannot have.

I write chapters in three minute increments, the time it takes for a kid to find me hiding with my laptop and interrupt with something of extreme importance: He hit me! I pooped and there’s no toilet paper. Teach me how to fold this ice cube into a paper towel (what?). Can I eat some cake? Mom, if you were a Viking, would you trust a vegetarian hunter dragon to catch food for your tribe?
Sometimes I allow myself to feel supremely irritated by their blatant disregard for my writing time. I think for the last ten years I have been raising kids that still cannot get their own dang toilet paper or cut a piece of cake. Aloud I say, “Stop playing with ice cubes!” and “No, I wouldn’t trust a vegetarian hunter dragon to catch my food.”

I am home with my kids, my husband is working hard to pay my bills, I am sleeping through the night, we are all healthy. I woke up this morning and took a hot shower and tonight I will kiss my people before I fall asleep. Tomorrow I will buy them Pokemon cards in payment for a summers’ worth of mowed back yard. This is all enough, it is plenty. Still I want, and I cannot have.

I lie on the couch at night, hanging onto the silent hours when I should already be in bed. I berate myself for not getting more done, for not having a cleaner house. I review the days’ events in my mind, wish I was a better mom, wife, friend. I let myself feel aggravated with people whose problems play footsie with my own insecurities.

My thumb mindlessly scrolls. I’m a couch potato, my eyes trained on a glowing miniature screen. And this is what those Instagram busybodies are singing to me, even as they innocently paint it glossy, empathetic, or empowering–”You’ll get your Hawaii timeshare/speaking gig/book deal/successful business someday!”

It smells rotten, and what’s worse–I keep picking it up to smell it. I want and cannot have–this is true, but I am tired of it, the wanting. And I hope, because I know: there still is potential for it not to fully maim me.

How many years can a body go on coveting without it costing your very soul? How long can I try to convince myself that I’m not really covetous? Who owns me, who feeds my well when I greedily swallow all the pictures of things I want and cannot have?

James cracks a whip with his words.

Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom. But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. James 3:13-16

The wise man–he says–lives quietly in deeds that are humble, undeclared, non-pixelated. Influencers and self-promoters, they wither in wisdom’s sunlight. They are, ultimately, the gatekeepers of disorder. Stay away! James warns.

You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes and enemy of God. James 4:4

This truth hit me like a slap in the face. I decided to unhook Facebook and Instagram from my coattails. As if I owed Mark Zuckerberg or his cronies a blessed thing! Not my pictures, opinions, privacy, joy. I might very well want and cannot have, but I can certainly limit its loud, mocking voice. I could walk away from that little phone with the one magic button. I could get an old fashioned alarm clock to wake me up in the mornings.

This, I think, is the struggle of the rich young ruler Jesus speaks with in Luke 18. He is the Bible character to whom I best relate. The rich man, greedy and good as me, wanted to have it all, be it all. His cell phone tucked in his back pocket, he approached the Master and asked him what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. He was willing to add a new title to his resumé, sing at church on Sunday morning, sort out his recycling bins. So he was caught off guard when Jesus said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Lk. 18:22)
I imagine there was an awkward pause as the man thought about his latest Amazon Prime purchases and instinctively felt for the cell phone in his pocket so he could text his girlfriend what Jesus said (shocked emoji + bawling emoji). The story says, “When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy.” (Lk. 18:23)

I know this feeling. I want, and I cannot have. Jesus, I want to follow You, but You say I must let go in order to have more. I especially have to let go of the things of this world, the things that look harmless but suck me into disorder and dirty my well.

Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
(Lk. 18:24-27)

I have started to hate that phone in my pocket, the phone that wakes me up in the morning, the phone that causes desires to battle within me. How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!
But Jesus says what is impossible with man is possible with God.
This is the shred of hope.
Hope for the rich man.
Hope for me.

July 4th

I hope you are raising your flags and donning stars and stripes this weekend. I hope you are remembering the price paid for you, that you might be able to mark a holiday rooted in freedom. There have been generations of great men and women who thought of you, their own future generations to come. Many were they who sacrificed their lives that you might have the privilege of choosing what is best along the lines of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In the baby stage of our country there must have been several sanguine folk who knew the story of a Life laid down for another. I don’t believe their courage was of the diesel truck, guns n’ guts variety. Nor did they stand, bawdy and proud on the cusp of a sexual revolution.
What they valued and held dear were their families, food in their bellies, and the right to defend their lives. In this spirit, they gritted their teeth and sent their beloved sons off to war.

I’ve seldom heard a veteran tell stories without tears staining his cheeks. A dear friend of ours, a WW2 bomber pilot, never spoke of his service. It was too costly to mention.

I am wondering at the cycle of history and how quickly we are abandoning our reverence for freedom. Perhaps this shows how indifferent we have become. Maybe we’ve so acclimated to our rights that we are flabby in our convictions. It seems our culture is too thinned-skinned and tolerant to even be bold enough to step out as free-thinking individuals–what used to be the cornerstone of our democracy. If your right to think and act freely is limited by my idea of what I understand to be acceptable–well, then, that is hardly freedom. We are only tossing lassoes around each other’s necks, hoping to throttle one another. If we keep running in circles around gun control, abortion, immigration–well then, I think we are missing the root of the issue. I wonder: what will become of America?

There are two things to consider, and they are these:

The first: We are all living in an infinite space that we feebly approach as finite. Whether you believe in a God or not, the cosmos are immeasurable and expansive. Numbers continue to count up to infinity. We are only humans with a bit of reasoning humming in our heads. The rules we have determined to make a government have evolved from intuition fed by experience. Observing the if-thens, causes-and-effects–these are our best, most humane (as we understand them) tools to govern men. For example, if a proven murderer isn’t justly punished, he may go on killing people. Therefore, we lock him up to prevent him from doing so.

The second thing to consider is–there are some things we cannot control–things that are out of our power to reason. How can hate and bitterness grow so prolific in our hearts? How could a person come to the point of murdering? Yet each of us is fully capable of the very act! It is a scary, overwhelming thought, to face the depth of depravity inside our own souls. It has been clawing instinctually in our bones since the dawn of time. We dare God himself, hate burning in our eyes: What if I did whatever I want?

And so these two things–our feeble, limited understanding of controlling what we think is right and good and our inner, out of control me-me-me! monster, fight constantly. It is manifested in every institution: family, work, school, government. Every hot topic is in a tug of war between perceived control and selfishness, both of which quickly run amok, because we cannot rightly source the why behind our motives. When our feathers are ruffled or expectations are not met, we stiffen and throw a tantrum.

Perhaps we have reached the pinnacle of freedom apart from God, and this is why we must begin chaining up those who disagree with us. It is an ugly cycle, the push-pull of souls who are inwardly divided.

Our capacity to rage self-righteously and our out-of-control urge to get what we want–as well as the desire to watch others scratch each other’s eyeballs out over the matters of the day–is ultimately ruining us. Plain and simple, we are sinners.

Sin? Who even talks about sin anymore? Not just the dirty, fleshy kind, but the self-righteous, fake kind? We sprinkle these pesky attitudes with soft admonitions–Talk kindly to yourself! Be open-minded! But only with an undercurrent philosophy of do what makes you happy. We sabotage our own best intentions simply by being under the influence of the world. We will not make peace unless someone bends a knee, till a major sacrifice is made.
George Washington said,

The Nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

This is a curious thing to say in 2019. That a nation might be founded on Christian principles and held up by duty…or carried off by hate or pleasure–look around! It is not impossible! In fact, we are staring this disaster in the face. We have taken a holy God out of the picture–replaced him with our own cockroach-level ideas of freedom.
But Jesus still offers peace–marked by the blood He once shed on a cross. His life for yours.
You might lay down your life and find He hands you a new one, a better one. This is the way to freedom. This marks the path of liberty, where even a whole nation can be healed.

America is fascinating. She has birthed her own breed of beautiful misfits and adopted many more. She has welcomed the “tired, the poor, the huddling masses yearning to be free” (Emma Lazarus). This has not been without a price, and I am thankful that people who have never known me have paid it.

In G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, he makes a study of order and grace. It makes me think of the opportunities we still have in our country as Americans:

We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.
(Chesterton, Orthodoxy)

God bless America, the land of the free, the land of heroes. May we turn back to Jesus so we might find peace among men. May we make room for good things to run wild.

Today, and “things used to be better” mentality

I considered being vague at first in this post regarding location, but then realized that a year has passed. This feels like plenty of time for people to stop caring about where we used to live. At least no weirdos will be able to track me down…not that they would, but you never know. Maybe it is only a dot on the timeline, a span of a few marks–nine years to be exact–but if I were a tree it would make a solid, stabilizing ring in the trunk of my life. And now a new ring has already formed.

We moved away from our Durango home to the Denver area almost a year ago. It’s been a full four seasons–well, if you count snow as a summery sort of precipitation.
On the mountain there were always two weeks in June we could declare as summer–it actually was warm enough to detect some small discomfort inside the house. Having no air conditioning unit or swamp cooler, we bore it, knowing it was quite temporary. The windows remained shut until dusk when we reopened them to let the house fill back up with woodsy-fresh mountain air until morning. After these two weeks, thunderstorms rolled in nearly every afternoon, so that we kept our windows open all the time. On the fourth of July we would rush home from the parade, throw on our coziest sweatpants and down-filled jackets, and sit on the deck to make s’mores and watch the downpour. On an off year (of the drought variety) we would pray for rain and feel sorry we couldn’t watch fireworks over the lake while eating buttered popcorn from the back of a pickup truck.

A hardy tolerance of winter, a woeful intolerance of heat and humidity–this marked our mountain conditioning.

It is no longer familiar to me, the born and bred midwesterner, to hold an ice cream cone in my hand and watch it completely melt out of the cone before I even taste it. In Colorado you can lick ice cream at an enjoyable pace instead of spinning the cone horizontally on the tongue, racing to consume it before it disappears or the bugs overtake you. Here at altitude the biggest concern eating al fresco is whether you can finish your sandwich before the bread dries out.

Summer is eagerly anticipated, a warming balm to the weary, thermal-wearing winter warriors. This is doubly true for the non-skiing family (us, obviously, because it’s expensive and our kids are like refrigerator magnets to trees) who bides the cold season mostly tussling in a fit of cabin fever.

When summer finally appears we revel in it. We plant seeds and hold our breath. We roll up our pant legs and wade in icy streams–snow melted straight from the mountains. We build bonfires to share with friends. We spend cool nights camping, food boxes securely locked and hidden to ward off bears. We huddle together and shiver (as opposed to shooing fierce mosquitoes and junebugs out of the tent). We loathe the morning for its chill and pray the kids don’t hear any sounds of squirrels chattering above them. We pack backpacks full of water bottles and granola bars and hike as far as we can go–till the water runs out or the kids on our shoulders become insufferable. Heat doesn’t consume us, only the threat of sunburn causes us to pause and re-apply lotion.

This was our life in the southwest corner of Colorado, till we moved a year ago.

It was beautiful, just like they say, a ‘slice of heaven’.
But we drove back through there a couple weeks ago, and you know what? I wasn’t sad that we’d left. It was exactly the same. Just as beautiful and unchanged. It holds dozens of people I love, yes, as well as our first home. It was the place I was handed the gift of solitude and independence and where I became a mother four times over. But I don’t miss it.

Maybe I’m too practical, or maybe this is proof that I’m terribly cynical, anti-sentimental, and have some childhood anxieties to overcome. Frankly, I think memories can be sneaky, lying little buggars. We can tend to polish them with such reverence that they ultimately no longer resemble their original selves…Were they even ever good? Nostalgia applies a sort of patina that gleams incandescent and luminous. We hold memories as idols…if it is good, it becomes a trophy we point to, over and over. If it is bad, it gets thrown in the compost to rot away. If we get an optimistic hair, we might try and dig it out now and then to polish it for posterity’s sake.

The truth is, we can never again reclaim a trophy (good or bad) because it has already been fairly won. The glory or disappointment was in the moment, and now the moment has passed. The victory will not–must not!–be repeated, for the race is different every generation.

The Israelites had been in the desert for forty-five days (a month and a half!) from their miraculous escape from slavery when they began moaning and groaning, reminicing the good old days…when they were slaves!

If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt!” they said. “There we sat by pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, but you have brought us into this desert to starve this whole assembly to death!” Exodus 16:3

After two years into the desert, their story was even wilder:

…again the Israelites wept and said, “Who will feed us meat? We remember the fish we ate freely in Egypt, along with the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our appetite is gone; there is nothing to see but this manna!” Numbers 11:4-6

Things used to be better! Remember the good old slave days in Egypt? It was LUSH.

Do we, ten years (fifty years?) removed from “bondage” (too harsh a word?!) –recount blissful babyhood while in reality those moments were marked by struggle? What about the morning I spent arguing with the insurance company on the phone while dragging a fit-throwing two year old (clinging like lichen to my foot) to her bedroom?
Is yesterday always preferable to today?

I do think it is a gift to turn old grapes into fine wine (this the gift of storytelling) but it carries the danger of drinking too much, intoxicating the mind with longing and notions of “better” days. Worse yet is compelling others to sip it rather than make their own.
Maybe there have been some good, good times. You won’t forget them. Maybe your babies were the sweetest, funniest, tenderest little love morsels. I’ll be you have pictures galore. But maybe you’ve outgrown some friendships, or something is compelling you to move and change. Maybe you look in the mirror and you no longer see who you were thirty years ago. Can you be okay with that? Can you face today?

In Durango, the bright red poppies I’d sown in the front bed of our fixer-upper home were the most beautiful I had ever seen. I sat on the deck in the mornings drinking coffee, watching bees and hummingbirds gurgle and dive in the garden and tree pollen float through the air like tiny fairies. In reality, this happened maybe a dozen times total.
In Durango, I slept less than I’d ever slept in my whole life. My kids did not sleep. They weren’t sleepers or eaters. They cried and fussed. I so badly wanted a break, some relief from the work. I threatened to leave my husband. I cried a lot and lost a lot of weight. I wondered what in the world I was doing with my life. I had no family within a seventeen hours’ drive of our house. I was lonely on a mountain, scared of bears, mountain lions, and leaving the house at night.
(I actually think I might hate tent camping, but still can’t bear to convince my better senses of this.)

There’s been pain mixed with beauty–I can’t try to sort it out, because they like to walk hand in hand. Memories are not trophies–they need no upkeep.
It’s okay now, because that chapter has been written. Someday, if I get there, I might pass the stories down, stories without strings attached. Maybe I’ll convince my unsentimental self that today’s moments are tomorrow’s treasures.
All I’ve really got is Today, and it doesn’t leave much time for polishing old trophies.

Seasons

We had a little dinner party last Saturday night. In preparation, I raked the who-knows-how-old green turf rug that covers our back patio (believe it or not, the tool for the job is called a perky carpet groomer) and considered getting rid of the old nasty thing. It irks me every time I find ketchup dripped and drying on it, paint and paint brushes, random containers of water, mudpies, crushed rocks (the boys are on an endless quest to find geodes)–basically all the signs of kids enjoying their summer.
I try and remind myself: there is a season for everything, a time for this and a time for that. This is a sincere, unending quest for perspective in my own messy sphere of living. I am not an orderly person, but I sense there must be, naturally, an order to life, because I’m quickly overwhelmed by a lack of peace when I busily try to multitask and ‘seize the day’. Kids have upped the ante when it comes to keeping all the plates spinning. To what lengths, exactly, should I go to ensure their well-being? What must I sacrifice on the altar of good parenting?
For a season, everything. Time, I think, a paying job, and a bona fide resumé. A porch and home swept clean, maybe some dreams. It is not a cheap or sparkly endeavor.

I had a mortifying experience yesterday. I took all the kids to a brand new cello teacher. While my oldest was having his hour-long lesson, my third boy began puking all over the white-carpeted basement. The cello teacher’s dogs rushed to lap up the barf, my little girl began crying because the dogs were no longer playing with her. She hit her head in the drama and began screaming. The cello teacher’s wife rushed down the stairs, I picked up FC and ran to the toilet because he was choking…I wanted to run away and cry. It was terrible. I sort of hope I forget the incident, that it gets wiped from my memory like it never even happened. (If I write it down and force it into a single black-and-white paragraph, maybe it won’t haunt me?!)
God sure knows how to keep me humble. What a lesson in patience and compassion. I couldn’t have hustled my way out of that nightmare, I could only endure it.
This makes me wonder: maybe there’ll be seasons, even whole years of enduring so that God can reap a bounty of righteousness in your life.
Living seasonally isn’t only a natural progression, but a catalyst for God’s work. For things to grow and bloom properly, for the wheat to fall and produce seed for the next generation, we must submit to the rhythm of seasons.
The world tries to fool us into a twilight zone lie…that there are no seasons, that beauty and joy senselessly fades, and we must pour our energy into fighting it. Look around and ask yourself, where am I finding examples of seasonal, fruitful living? Put down your phone–you won’t find any answers on social media or CNN–they are empty cesspools promoting a doctored life. They will tell you that coveting youth is only natural, that you are only appreciating la vida pura, nothing more. Your home, body, wealth, possessions, freedom: this is the tangible, ultimate proof of happiness.

Today’s inspirational speakers and dreamers argue there are no seasons–there’s only hustle. You can have it all–the hallmark illusion of the American dream–is bound up in your own strength to wrestle it into existence. But we know this isn’t true. If success is only found in your ability to hustle, you will miss whole seasons of your life. Ask any old man who wished he had worked less and spent more time with his kids. Ask any old woman who has nothing to show for her life except bitter complaints that her own grown children won’t visit her. Muscling the dreams of youth to the ground only reaps neglected acres of weedy thorn patches.
We flat out ignore this to match the pace of the world around us. We shamelessly neglect important things. We forget about seasons. We age, and we are shocked when regrets crease and multiply like wrinkles in our soul.

At our dinner party, my newest friend, Mary, a sweet ninety year old lady, sat across from me at the table and matter-of-factly uttered profound observations on living. On traveling to Egypt and Italy in her twenties, “I knew I had to see the world before I settled down.” On quitting her job in her thirties to raise her children, “I just didn’t feel comfortable leaving that job to a stranger just so I could keep my career going.”
She spoke sans regret. I could see her confidence, her joy in looking back on years of trusting God to use her life intentionally. She was peaceful, beloved by her children and husband. Hers was a testimony I long to hear.

The reality of aging, the falling apart of our bodies (vessels we once thought we indestructible)–only crystallizes with each passing year. No wonder we flinch when we see odd hairs sprouting, new bumps and wrinkles and aches popping up…it is the sting of death! Pain is the surest response to puncture. We loathe it, but we cannot halt it. If we deny the law of time, we must make the world our home, the people in it, our temporary audience. We worship our youth and despise our future. It becomes self-fulfilling and bitter, a war to the end. We forget that beauty fades, but there are far more valuable things to treasure.

On Mother’s Day, I took pictures of families at our little church. I printed them off and passed them to all the moms the following Sunday. Ruby, eighty-something–a witty, sweater-and-pearls walker-pushing wonder (and the best friend a three-year old girl could have)–chuckled when she saw her photo.
“Well,” she joked, “I suppose it won’t get any better than that.”
The people who age with the most grace seem to be aware of seasons. “She is clothed with strength and dignity, she can laugh at the days to come.” (Psalm 31:25)

They aren’t surprised by the passing of years. They are weathermen and weatherwomen, anticipating atmospheric change, preparing for the coolness of fall, stocking their cellar for the frigid winter.

Mary’s husband, Richard, stepped from the green turf patio back inside our house after dinner was over. The kids had entertained them with singing and music until it had gotten dark. He leaned on his cane, dark eyes gazing around my kitchen and dining room. He noted how comfortable it felt, how familiar it was to his own home.

“You haven’t updated any of the kitchen since the house was built, have you? Ha, this is the same range and oven I have in my house!”
I shrugged and remembered the crusty patio rug I was sweeping only hours earlier.
“I guess there’s no sense in changing anything if it isn’t falling apart,” I said, because my own ears needed to hear it.
“You have a beautiful home,” he nodded, patting my five year old on the head.
I knew he was talking about more than just the house. His words ring with truth. He is wise–a new friend, an old weatherman, hinting at seasons to come.

Since my youth, God, you have taught me,
And to this day I declare your marvelous deeds.
Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God,
Till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.

Psalm 71:17-18

Summer class

I am beginning a summer English class in our neighborhood.

This was an obvious response to the need I’ve seen at our local school, the difficulty for non-English speaking parents to communicate without translators. Parent participation in their kids’ school is directly impacted by barriers such as language. I haven’t begun teaching just yet–I’m still waiting for a certificate to appear in the mail–but the last twelve weeks I have been preparing. We all really should do college when we’re thirty-five instead of fresh out of highschool; it’s much more applicable, and no boyfriends are around to distract you.
Ha.

Last fall, I was picking the kids up from school when it occurred to me I had something to offer. After the final bell rings, the boys usually meet me on a big field out in front of the building. Of course I’m always dragging little kids along, and it generally takes us forever to coax them to the school, then off the playground, then to walk back home. What takes a normal person five minutes takes us a half hour. On this particular day, the kids were playing on swings and I was hustling them to go home. Out of nowhere a little boy appeared on the steps. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old. He squinted his eyes and in panicked Spanish said, “Excuse me, excuse me! Do you speak any Spanish?”

“Uh…poquito!” I replied. School had been out for several minutes, the buses had all left, and we were the only ones still standing outside the building. “Que necesitas?”

He began rattling off words so quickly that I had to ask him to slow down. It was his first day of school, he was new here, he had just had eye surgery the day before; he couldn’t see. He didn’t know where his mom was, or how he was supposed to get home. He lived in a tall, red apartment building. His mother drove a white car. He didn’t know her phone number, but he knew his aunt’s. I grabbed my kids and we all walked around the building to see if the front office was still open.

The ladies at the front desk were surprised. They do not speak Spanish, so they had to wait for someone to arrive to phone call the boy’s mother. The little boy was worried and scared. I told him everything would be alright, then I had to leave because my own squirmy kids were hungry and tired.

It made me think about the little boy’s parents. Could something more be done?
It made me glad that we are a boring family that dawdles after school on the playground.

I marvel that Jesus said Love your neighbor, and that was it. He didn’t say to try to eliminate global poverty, stop the North Koreans from blasting nukes, fix the entire immigrant crisis, make world peace, or argue a point to the death on social media. He didn’t even ask us to try and understand the scope of hate, devastation, hunger, cruelty, despair that rocks our world. He just told us to remain in Him and keep an eye on the people in our path that need help (Luke 10). He just said, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31) and expected us humans to trust that this one-step-at-a-time method was His best, most intentional way to love Him back. He left us an example to follow in His Word, and it boils down to the most simple idea ever: to pay attention.

This comes with a price, I have learned. Any mom or dad who has stayed home with a small child and a three day plan to potty train them bootcamp-style knows the stakes. When you assume the task of training your precious minion, your only goal in life is to chauffeur them to the toilet before they puddle up the carpet, sofa, bed or chair. You stretch plastic over the carpet, drag the tiny potty stool into the living room, make a stash of salty pretzels and juice bags. Everything falls to the wayside; microwaved hot dogs become a staple supper fare. You neglect your home, your work, your body, your life. You are on a mission: nothing else is as important as keeping poop out of their pants. You will not get paid a dime to accomplish this, and any thanks will only come in the form of mad dashes to the filthy Walmart restroom right in the middle of the checkout lane.

This is the urgency of paying attention.

Yet we fill up our days with busy-ness to where we can’t see a neighbor in need even if they were pounding on our door for a cup of sugar. We are consumed by a virtual life, the breaking of bread with our iPhone screens. We are too busy to even look our children in the eyes. Too afraid of the ultra-needy sucker fish-type. Too weak to set healthy boundaries. We don’t really want to partake in someone else’s struggle, feel someone else’s pain. We don’t want their failures to rub shoulders with our successes. We assume we know all the hows and whys without first making an informed observation. We filter our love for others through a sieve: Do they deserve my time? Will this hinder my success? What will people think?
In Matthew 6, Jesus declares that worrying about ourselves, our clothes, our shelter, our food–is a silly endeavor. What really matters, He says, what serves as a hitching post in our soul that every other tangible need is tied to–that which sets the believer apart from the unbeliever–is this:
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt. 6:33).
Seek first! Paying attention is not passive or an alternate route; it’s the first, most crucial step. Every success hinges on seeking first his kingdom.
God has excellent foresight. His perfect plan for each of us relies on our faith in Him, only to abide in Him. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

“Apart from me you can do nothing”–I sort of thought this was a little harsh of him to say, but isn’t it kind? We don’t have to wander around, hoping our ambiguous good deeds somehow serve a nebulous purpose and make us feel happy with ourselves. No, there is a measured effect when we draw life from the Vine–it’s fruit. Things not growing on the Vine are dead, and they don’t amount to much. The only life is in the branches.
I’m nervous about starting something new. What if no one comes? What if people come and they hate it? What if I fail? What if this is a massive disaster?
But then I realize I’m making it all about me, and I get over it. Preparing a way, or “seeking first the kingdom” doesn’t rely on my ability to be awesome or even capable. It relies on my willingness to notice, show up, and believe that God can work with what I’ve got.

I’ll tell you this–I have no clue if teaching English is what God wants me to do. I’ve been working hard, staying up late at night to write papers and pass my certification, and I haven’t felt a sense of this is it. But I do think He is rather fatherly and wonderful and excited about me. I’ve never heard a bossy, celestial voice or seen visions. But He does throw out some fantastical promises in the Bible, and I cling to them. In Malachi 3, the Lord dares His people to go all in, to hang their hat on His goodness.

“Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”
(Malachi 3:10)

Just see if I can’t blow your mind, He says. This seems like a darn good bet. God can use my little investment, my menial mom-job of paying attention, and He is pleased to help me rake in the chips.

I’m all in, Jesus. I’m only, ever, all in.

Tornado

I’ve a massive tornado story under my belt as of Tuesday night. The kids and I had roadtripped out to Missouri for a quick, spur-of-the-moment visit and were on our way back when I headed straight into the storm. To be fair, I didn’t have a clue it was coming. I was just following the sometimes-faithful old Siri on a new route to I-70.
We had stopped for a quick park meetup with my dear friend Megan south of Kansas City. After a quick romp thru the sprayground we set off again. In between the fight over a Pokemon book and a five year old’s complaints of a stomachache, I realized the sky was getting rapidly darker. It occured to me I ought to think about the weather. Cars on the highway were slowing down, their drivers’ jaws dropped wide. Several cars were perched on the overpass, headlights pointed west. That seems like a dumb thing to do if a storm is blowing in, I thought. This was immediately followed by a lightbulb moment: people do really dumb things, I bet it’s a tornado.

I shushed the kids and flipped on the radio. The first words I heard were an automated, “If you are in Douglas county, take shelter immediately.” I wondered if I was in Douglas county, but only for a hot second. It didn’t look like a tornado beyond my windshield; it looked like a wall of doom. I sped up to pass the slowing cars. Fortunately there was an exit, and I took it. We bolted into a Holiday Inn Express. The staff was ushering people into a ground level bathroom. Without shame I took a seat on the toilet. Then I asked a lady squished next to me, “Um, I just got off the highway. Where exactly am I?” She patted my knee. “You’re in Lawrence, Kansas, hon. And you did the right thing getting off the road.”

There were at least twenty people in the room. We prayed for safety, for the tornado to miss us. The moment we said ‘amen’ a guy looking at his phone said, “Huh! It’s moving away from us! It’s missing us by a quarter mile!”

We held on in the bathroom for a bit longer to be safe.

An hour and a half later we deemed it safe to get back on the highway. Immediately we passed a car nose-down in a pond, its windows down and airbags deployed.

This has been my closest obvious encounter with certain disaster. Heaven only knows how many other times I’ve escaped only by the skin on my teeth. I was a bit jittery and snappy with the kids the rest of the drive home, especially when they whined about only having granola bars and crackers for supper that night.
I wanted to shake them, “Don’t you realize how lucky we are to be eating granola bars right now?!” God let a tornado rip across Kansas but He let it miss us by a stone’s throw.
Think of your worst natural disaster nightmare and consider this: God can choose to spare or take a life, and we will have nothing to say about it, only gratitude for the next breath.

I have friends who have told me that religion is for people who are afraid. People who want to control other people by fearmongering. I will tell you this: nothing puts the fear of God in you like a radio PSA to find a hole in the ground quick before a vortex destroys you. You are not in control.

The confused soul today maintains that there is more valor in questioning than in submission. This is interesting, considering how little control we have over our own lives. We are tiny beings who watch the radar so we know when to run and hide from the weather. This is an obvious metaphor for our current cultural climate, and yet we refuse to cry out to the only One who can save us from destruction.

This reminds me of a man named Jacob.
If you know anything about the story of Jacob in the Old Testament, you’ll remember he was a mama’s boy brown-noser. He pulled off one of the biggest hoaxes in Bible history by donning goat skins and tricking his blind old man into giving him his brother’s birthright.
After running away from home (scared that his big brother will beat the snot out of him), he starts down a path of setbacks, one after the other. But he grows up. Hard work and a sneaky father-in-law (arguably more deceptive than even Jacob) are the catalyst for sincere maturation in his life. He develops discernment. He learns how to set boundaries. He learns how to ranch and take care of his children.

There comes a point in the story when Jacob is moving his family to a new land. He first lets his family cross the river, and then he is alone for the night. Genesis 32 says a man came and wrestled with him until daybreak.
They wrestled all night, the two of them. Finally, as dawn was breaking, the stranger said to Jacob, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”

But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Gen.32:26)
The man asked him his name. “Jacob,” he panted. Jacob, which means he grasps the heel–an idiom for he deceives.

“Your name will no longer be He Deceives,” the man declared. “From now on you will be Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”
Then Jacob realized he had been wrestling not with any man, but God himself. He had lassoed a tornado and was holding on for dear life.

You see, God wants us to wrestle with him when we are good and ready! Not for us to stand in the ring as a victor, our arm raised in the air by some referee, no. He intends for us to be changed by Him. He wants our full-on, all-night, intimate, cradle-pinning effort. He’s looking for the indomitable spirit of the seeker: I’m ready, God. I’m no deceiver. Change me, change my name. Call me something different.

Proverbs 2:3-5 says

If you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.
The story of Jacob wrestling God isn’t a picture of a man throwing shade on the Maker of the universe. No. He knew he had no chance at strong-arming is Creator, nor was this his intention. He knew, ultimately, that God would have His way. “I’m not letting go of You, no matter what,” he thought, and blessing came through his tenacity to cling. The verse says God touched Jacob’s hip socket to wrench it. Jacob was left a limping man for the rest of his life. For years, when people saw Jacob coming, they had a visual of his story, his wrestle with God.
I want that confidence and I want an awesome story like that.

He sought, he stayed.
He submitted.
He met a storm; he took shelter.

May we wrestle wisely (and always watch the weather).