Flower Patch Farmgirl

Green Table - Summer Ed.

2013-06-17T23:03:00.000-04:00

I don't really think of myself as a seasonal decorator.
Then again, I cleared 13 boxes of stuff out of the basement earlier today, and though most of said "stuff" was books, the hand-made acorn wreath and the entire tub of valentine's day regalia might beg to differ.

All I really know is, this green table hasn't loved me for long, but she sure has loved me well.
She was bought for a song at an auction last spring because I somehow knew she'd be perfect in the front entry of my soon-to-be new home.

I found her all sad and dusty, the sorriest, faded mint-green. Her knob was plastic with a faux "metal" finish. She ran me something like $7, and all that ailed her was cured with a ~~reckless~~ gutsy decision to paint her crazy-bright green.

Who knew bright green would be such a universal, works-with-everything color?

Well, God, that's who. He was clearly on to something with all his fancy nature business.

We drop our keys in that little milk-glass soap dish many times a day. It saves us over and over and I'm not naming names, but it especially saves the forgetful dude in the Santa beard. (For the love. The beard. What is with all this beardedness?)

Every thing else is purely nonfunctional and entirely decorative.
I guess I went and made a vignette, even though I hate that word.
Sue me.

The croquette mallets were picked up at yard sales. They've seen their better days.

Still --- I'm smiling. They pass the test.

The books were gifts from friends. I picked up the white pitcher years ago and can't stop loving it. Vintage camera is a Cory find. Cortland came from the Allegan flea market ages ago and subconsciously inspired the last name of Lainey Courtland. Mirror also came from Allegan and used to live in my old mudroom.

Roses, courtesy of whomever landscaped our little front yard.

Hold the phone. The wire basket is officially functional and utilitarian. At least for the next few months.
I'm so practical! So nearly-Amish!
You can call me Miriam Yoder. Or Waneta Stolzfus.

This whole gig just speaks my summer-centric language.
It makes me happy everyday, for free.
And that, my friends, is the holy grail of decorating, if you ask me.
Which you didn't.
But still.

My Jam

2013-06-16T21:05:00.001-04:00

Remember how I whined the other day about how crazy pants our summer has been so far?

Well, good news, we got gutsy and decided to just claim the weekend. Name it. Claim it. That was the beginning and end of our plan.

But first, we had a few things to attend to. Good things. Great things.

Friday night Haven graduated. I was so proud of her and so honored to be there on her big night while she walked on stage and accepted her diploma looking like a moviestar with complicated hair. It's been a long ride. And I'll just leave it at that. :) But we knew she could do it. I'm sure all kinds of regular high school graduations are special, but there's just something extra about graduations for alternative high schools. I kept getting a little verklempt. You know. It's just that these kids found the last train. It was do or die, and they did.

They talked about their journey toward God and I kept sinking my shoulders into the hunch that they might know him every bit as well as I do. Maybe better. They sauntered and swaggered and slinked across the stage. They want to be chefs, nurses, librarians, construction workers, computer programmers. They've seen enough to know that dreaming is allowed after all, and that they deserve a future. Tell me you wouldn't have cried, too.

Then we went to dinner. At 9pm. And all of my kids fell asleep at the table while I licked goat cheese off my fingers like it was 5 o'clock, easy.

Saturday we celebrated our nephew's birthday.
And then we had a sitter for the rest of the day. It was so freaking high time.

Here's the thing, though. Sometimes we wait just a day or two too long. It's not our fault. But we wait until we're over-extended. We wait until the thought of changing into something pretty makes me want to cry in a bad way. We wait until the only logical conclusion is to part ways and take naps in separate wings of the house. And by wings, I mean upstairs/downstairs.

Sometimes we do this and we forget to wake up.

Sometimes it rains and there are no good movies showing and the fancy restaurant intimidates us with its perkiness and we decide we're just going to stay in and watch a movie. Maybe go whole hog and get ice cream.

But sometimes we rally. Inexplicably.

It was one of those nights. I'd saved up for a month for our fancy dinner date, a combination birthday/new job sort of thing. Hallelujah, we were going, dangit. The night was our oyster and who gives a rip if I didn't look all that fancy? Not me, that's who.

So we dined. I took a picture of my salad to show you, but as it turns out, I can't share. Cory upgraded today from his Droid to a slide phone, eerily similar to mine. A dramatic budgetary shift will do that to a dude. Also, inmates are known for lots of things, but burning up your inbox isn't one of them.

All I can say is, we narrowly escaped the clutches of marital decimation early in our marriage, we brought three tiny babies into our world, we adopted a 19-year old felon, we cashed in a dream, we built a house in the hood, and we parent 4-7 kids together on a daily basis, but I daresay nothing has been or will ever be more unifying that the shared social isolation of a throw-back cell phone with technological advances only as far-reaching as the standard text. Solidarity, Babe. We got it.

But back to the salad, because I know you care: Bed of baby greens, sliced golden beets, sliced strawberries, whole raw almonds, goat cheese, sherry vinaigrette. Oh my cow. Or as my Grandpa would say, "Great day!"

Then word came in that Calvin had a fever of 100.8
No big thang, right?
Nope. Wrong.

Long story short, I spent last night and most of today in the hospital with Calvey. He's feeling fine, which might be what makes these experiences so defeating. Nothing like spending Father's day in the hospital with your not-sick kid. We had even risked potential eternal condemnation by passing on a family reunion because we just really needed a day - just one day. Together. With no plans. And then we end up held against our will. Prisoners, practically. (Robert might take exception with my analogy here, but whatevs.)

The best news is, of course, that he's mostly A-OK. Bored, but good-ish. He should be home later tonight.

The second best news is that I spent multiple hours reading The Lonely Polygamist (PG-13). It was slow going with this book initially, but now I can't possibly shake it. It's the kind of book that makes me think I should just leave it to the pros, you know? Maybe I'm meant to be a reader, not a writer. No shame in that. Homeboy makes mean business of character development. The story is fine and all, but in the end, that's never what sinks this ship. It's the writing. The soul-clutching, evocative, luscious, wit-laden stringing together of words. Paint me a picture and I'll hop right in. Paint me a picture like his and I'll probably take mental notes while I read.

Third best news? We enacted the changing of the guards and I got to come home to eat and shower and, you know, sleep.

Dear Hot & Sour Soup,
I have no idea what your flavors are.
You boast chunks of tofu and your texture teeters on gelatinous.
You're the underdog of the Chinese buffet soups and Cory loathes you.
But I'll always be a victim to your charms and I appreciate your nerve.
Love,
FPFG

Fourth best/Absolute worst? The littlests were all farmed off for the night and the house is positively still. I contemplated the silence while making a batch of strawberry-peach freezer jam in my jammies.

There's an image of peach upside-down cake lodged in my psyche.

I'm officially obsessed with Desiree's season of The Bachelorette.

I guess that about wraps it up.

PS - Winner of the Olivia necklace is Tiffany! "You should know that there are people who read every post but never comment because commenting on a phone is a pain. Sorry about that. But we love your blog just the same!You should also know that the best way to pick a watermelon is to look for a dried shriveled stem. If the stem is still green, it's under ripe. If the stem is completely gone, it's over ripe. :-)" Email me, Sister!

When The Season is a Fast-Moving Train (Wreck)

2013-06-13T21:52:00.000-04:00

Here's my ~~day~~ ~~week~~ month so far:
Drive, food, drive, drive, break up fight, food, quell sass, drive, doctor, drive, laundry. Food.

We've thrown some fun in, too. Sure we have.

But I know that 2 straight weeks of running around non-stop = me in fetal position.
It hasn't happened yet, but I keep warning Cory, "I'm going to have a melt-down soon. Just FYI. I feel'er rising."

So what's the answer?

I don't know, why are you asking me?
Because all I know is that I do not glorify "busy", like that dumb pin would suggest. I'm not proud of it, people. I'm actually a tiny bit ashamed. Also, tired.

I never understood the parents who over-schedule, me being a homebody introvert and happily having children who mostly follow suit. But then it stopped being winter and all the little activities and obligations snowballed and here we are, it is summer, and I feel'er rising.

The good news? July is chill. Honest to goodness, it will remain chill. It must.
(Except, you know, there's some stuff I'd like to do and so far, I haven't found time....)

I'll keep you posted.

There are clearly a few things holding my sanity intact, and here they are, in no particular order:
* staying in bed until 7:30 or 8, even though the kids get up at 6:30 (it is ridic)
* keeping water bottles filled and in the fridge (minutes saved, minutes earned, people!)
* not showering until it is dire (this usually happens daily, but at strange times)
* quiet time for an hour or so (if we're home)
* raucous singing in the van
* library books
* staying up until 1am to have QT with Cory (this is admittedly a double-edged sword)
* letting the kids watch some tv every dang day and not worrying a single bit about it
* making them help with chores
* Romans 12
* piloxing (not even playing)

Speaking of piloxing, I just averted certain death for the third time. Here's what I've learned so far: I'm more uncoordinated than I even knew. I cannot be expected to move my legs back and forth while moving my arms in circles. It's not going to happen. Period. Also, I feel like I'm at an unfair disadvantage because my arms are almost as long as Shaq's. My wingspan is greater than my height, and I'm tall, y'all. I don't know why this hinders me, I only know that it must.

That massive, wall-length mirror. It killed me the first night. I looked so weird. Truly, truly weird.
But then I started to embrace what I saw a little. I have a gigantic forehead, okay? I've always been self-conscious about it. It's a legit fivehead. But Tyra Banks has one, too. I'm not the only one.
My limp bangs kept whipping around about my eye region and I just had enough. So I strap the suckers back now, and I'm all arms and forehead and I dig it.

This is who I am, and I'm so chill with it. It only took 36+ years, but I'm convinced that I owe it to piloxing. I never would have believed I could do something like this. I have no muscles. No rhythm. I've never been athletic. But I'm doing it, and I'm a little bit proud of my poor old body. I've been too hard on her all this time. Turns out, she can do stuff! So I'm gonna go ahead and keep her and love her.

Tonight, I'm rewarding my efforts and the fact that I survived and walked out of the class on my two spindly legs with Chinese take-out. It doesn't make perfect sense. I know it. But I'm hungry and we had $30 left in the envelopes and we'll just never be the people who roll extra cash over for next time. It has never happened. We came close this time. Almost there. But if there's one thing I know about us it's that we will always, always burn up extra cash on restaurant food. I don't know. We're good at some things, just not this. Our budget these days is, uh.... yeah. So we've been really good. So good that we had $30 left! Calls for a celebration, if you ask us. We're spoiled and entitled when it comes to take-out.

Also, we're not good at being exactly on time. I add that simply because it feels like the right night to clear my conscience.

So it looks like this is the good stuff, friends. This is 10 pm hot & sour soup on the couch with your man and the season finale of Homeland. This is looking your own exhaustion square in the mug then ignoring it in favor of a different kind of rest.

This is understanding that seasons come and go. This one is sketchy and messy, but it's filled with things that are important, people whom we love, so we do what we do and we play in the middle. Cleaning and sleep and boredom can wait.

Happy Thursday, Party People!
We're almost there.

But don't get too excited, because the weekend's even busier.

Pool Day

2013-06-12T20:45:00.001-04:00

We spent the afternoon at the pool for the 2nd day in a row. So just try and imagine the state of my house, why don'tcha. We're deep in the thick of these hap-smacking dog days where all we do is play and eat, with a little bit of resting in the middle.

I love summer. I may have mentioned that before.

My new favorite summertime hobby? Photographing Miss Beauty Cheeks in her swim cap.

This little Sisterfriend is a very close second...
She did not want me to take her picture. She would not smile. So we did that "Don't you dare smile!" trick and it worked for only a millisecond...and my point and shoot caught it! Hot dang.

My nephew Jack celebrated his 6th birthday today.
What's better than an afternoon at the pool with all your besties, 4 cheese pizzas, sparkler candles, and fudge pops?

I'll tell you what: A legendary thunderstorm. It's rolling our way. I feel hopped up and atwitter. It's the anticipation. And the round-the-clock meteorologists who are so gravely serious about their jobs that they take exasperated, martyred, exhilarated sips of water in between radar screens then lose their voices altogether about 3 hours in.

I mean, maybe 6 year olds don't feel exactly the way I do about major storms, but I'm pretty pumped about it. My birthday is sorta soonish, so I'm going to go ahead and take this as partly mine.

This just in: "Tennis Ball sized hail."
Come to Shannan.

My bigger little dudes are positively fish-like.

True story: I never learned to swim. I can't even say why, other than I was kinda wimpy and no one ever taught me. I do have a vivid memory of jumping off the high dive, which is a total head-scratcher. I'm not sure how it happened, really.

Dear "Gourmet Tomatoes" from Aldi for $1.29,
I want to kiss your bumpy faces.
Love,
FPFG

I tried to make JFlo's Magical Tomatoes and the next thing I knew, there was pasta. Then I remembered a zucchini and thin-scliced it up. Then there was a can of quartered artichoke hearts. Then things were officially out of hand.

Dear Friends,
Want to join me tomorrow for left-overs?
Please?
Love,
FPFG

I found this on top of the fridge during The Great Salad Expansion.
I feel like the heart and crosses really tone down the whole "skull in a bottle" message.
Well-played, Calvin.

While the noodles boiled, Ruby and I ran outside to check out the wreckage. Remember all of those abandoned houses on our street? Well, they're gone.

Dear Komatsu,
You're not my favorite neighbor. You're just loud. And messy.
No hard feelings. The crumbly houses just grew on me, that's all.
Mildly Toleratingly,
FPFG

Dear Coral Bells,
Thank you for loving me in the city.
Love,
FPFG

What did you do today?

PS - It's not too late to enter the Noonday giveaway!
PSS - Thanks for all the gingham/fedora support. You're total radness.

Summer Fashion and a Giveaway

2013-06-11T11:15:00.001-04:00

#Ginghamstyle + Funky, chunky, Olivia necklace (handmade in Uganda!) = Perfection

It's the circles with the squares. That combination completes me.

I'll exercise my flabby, ill-used brevity muscles and simply say that I'm in love with my new bling and especially with the message and ministry behind it.

I'm reminded all the time, in a hundred different ways, that we are all brothers and sisters. We're all a family, hemispheres and latitudes be danged. This little dude, my newest nephew, fresh off a plan from Uganda, is already making my world a little smaller and a whole lot brighter. He's extra-ours now, but even before he came, he was our brother, our son, our neighbor.

When you satisfy the needs of the oppressed, your night will become like the noon-day.
- Isaiah 58:10

One of my favorite things about blogging is that it has shown me so many different ways of connecting with and caring for our sisters and neighbors across the globe, through companies like Noonday Collection. Read their story and shop around.

Then come back here and tell me something I should know. Anything at all. Because I love you, man. And I love hearing you chatter at me. One of you will win an Olivia necklace just like mine! (The gingham is on you.)

PS - Olivia also works with a purple fedora. FYI.

How We Picked Our Church

2013-06-09T20:52:00.000-04:00

Photo taken at a different church in our neighborhood. Love their sign. So much.

Our vision is a neighborhood transformed by Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ.

-St. Mark's United Methodist Church, mission statement

We knew they were planning to pray for him today, but I had no idea what that might mean. Either way, I was grateful. I had no expectations and I've managed to chip away most of the tired, bent-up ideas about what makes a prayer noteworthy, the ones pressed into my conscience like clay in a mold.

I know now that God hears every prayer. He's not standing with a triage clipboard, funneling the loud and fancy prayers through a special, taller gate, making the meek ones, the fumbling ones, the memorized ones wait in line.

Still, I wasn't expecting our pastor to call the whole church up. For some reason, it surprised me when he told them to come, every one, and lay hands on Cory and I. I know by now that Pastor's words beg Jesus. They drip with the quiet power of the holy spirit. They're quiet and certain, well-thought and channeled straight from his heart. But asking the entire body to surround us? Huh. I sort of loved it.

So they came with canes, on unsteady knees. They rolled oxygen tanks on little wheels. They came in ties and in blue jeans. They came as sinners, saved only by grace, and they touched my back, their love burning straight through my jacket.

Every week we sit in wonder at the church God gave us. We lean forward to listen, we keep trying to learn names. We belong already because they made us their own and we took that gift and knew we would hold it.

The number of churches I've attended over the years crosses my right hand and ends somewhere on my left. These churches have grown me up in big ways and small ones. They have shown me Christ in different ways and have loved me well. But I was taught as a girl that I should go where I was "fed". There's a root of truth in that, but it may not go as deeply as I once thought.

My obligation is to find a church, one whose heart beats the Gospel, one that stands in reverence of the words of Christ. These things are not optional. But to us, most everything else is, and our priorities have shifted.

We're not interested in a tricked-out church.

We've grown bone weary of searching for the place that would fill us, shape us, form us, entertain us, train our children, give us a wide social network, provide us with options, cater to our fickle hearts and greedy souls.

Church wasn't tasked with any of that.

We used to be allergic to the different shades of theology, the different political leanings. We got hung up on nuances about communion and Sunday School. A pastor's wife who had chosen to keep her maiden name would have set off every alarm.

We didn't know that those differences would end up spinning us toward each other and that building a community with odd-shaped stones (among which we are surely the oddest) would feel like a fortress, albeit a small one.

We came to this church because God spoke to us about blooming where He planted us - finding a body of believers on our street, so when we invite our neighbors, it's easier for them to say yes. In our obedience to that, we were not guaranteed a single other thing. We didn't know if there would be a kids program or if our short people would like it. We didn't know if the service time would fall on our desired hour or what type of songs they would sing when we got there.

We found what we needed and we found what we didn't even know we needed. We found a church who seems to understand, on an individual and corporate level, its humanity - that in-born knack for screwing things up and getting things wrong. That is an attitude that invites a reliance on Christ.

We found a small group of people, mostly old and entirely unassuming, that doesn't try to stack the deck so people will come to them. They meet together, sing on-and-off-key, hobble up front for prayer, kneel for communion, eat pizza and pie. They do all of those things because they know in their brokenness that they need more of Jesus and that they find Him together. They do all of those things fueled by a singular belief - that they were called to go out - and those are the things that set their hearts right for the going. They are the hands and feet and arms and backs of Jesus. They are humbled sinners and failing humans. Their eyes are fixed on the eyes all around them. This is a church that knows and embraces its mission field. This is a people who finds mutuality in the brokenness it finds.

There's little pomp and circumstance, other than the felt banners switched out weekly and homemade cookies before service. There's a fritz-prone sound system and a pastor in Teva sandals. There are 2 rows of choir robes, led enthusiastically by the clerk from the auto parts store. The services are short and planned well in advance, two things I was taught as a child signaled discord with the Holy Spirit. There are strands of liturgy woven through the services and I find that I'm falling in love. In Red Letter Revolution, Tony Campolo says, "Members of churches that have high levels of liturgy often have high levels of loyalty to their churches." While loyalty to a particular church is not our goal, I'm starting to understand the truth in his words. Our hearts are becoming bound with the hearts around us in common thought, prayer, and belief. Some may find the Spirit lacking in the rote, but we find just the opposite. We find a meditative opportunity to trust in words we know by heart, words echoed from the lips in the next pew and the one behind.

There's a distinct rhythm to our Sundays, and I walk home wanting more. So God takes a wrecking-ball to all my smart assumptions about church and denomination. He reminds me again, so graciously, of my immaturity and my bent toward knowing it all.

All I know is that no person in the pew, no pastor in the pulpit is perfect. No church is perfect. It's okay to lead with that.

It all shakes straight down the line. It makes perfect sense that in this season where we're learning the full radiance of less, our hearts would find their home at the tiny church on the corner, devoid of all pretense, offering the only thing we need.

Our Lucky Day

2013-06-07T22:39:00.001-04:00

Well, for one thing, Silas had his first day of "summer school". Homeboy has been angsty that he isn't old enough to do some of the fun stuff the Biggers have on the docket, so we've all come to a nonverbal agreement to hype up his daycare/pre-school mornings as his extra-special, ridiculously fun Summer Camp. Cue exclamation points. !!!!!!!!!!!

And yes, I said morningS. Someone who loves him very much and understands him quite well graciously offered to pay for him to go on Monday mornings in addition to Friday mornings.

He offered mixed reviews today, including choice pre-schooler drama in the vein of, "The chicken nuggets were HUGE, so we could only get one, not two." (Chicken patty = HUGE chicken nugget.)

I stewed about him being gone, gotta be honest. Change is always a challenge for my boy, but safe change is healthy. Like his brother at this age, if given the option, Siley Pants would never, ever, ever leave my side. Ever.

But it's fun to watch them learn that they can do brave things and make friends and have fun away from Mama's side. I loved scooping him up and hearing all about his morning.

(I also loved dining peacefully at Taco Bell with Calvinator and Rubester.)

On the way home, we happened upon a wee strawberry sign at a random Amish farm. It was so small, I drove right on by. But then my honed produce instincts kicked in and I turned the boat around.

Lover.
Come to me, farmy strawbs.

I only wish our experience were half as quaint as that of the family in the background. They murmured in hushed tones while they mingled amid the berries. There was the humming of hymns. Some soft laughter.

We did things... another way.

Silas was more focused than I've ever seen him, bent and intent on picking the smallest, greenest berries he could find. Then there was the rock throwing. The sneaky pea picking.

Ruby decided to personally show me every. single. berry. she picked. And she really wanted a response for each mini-Vanna White display. I ran out of reactions. "Oooh! Good one!" "Nice!" "It's so...red!" "Wow, that's a cute one!" "Looks super juicy!"

Oy.

There was much tattling. A few odd threats. Etc...

We had to keep regrouping. "Everyone look at Mommy's face. Look at my face. Right here. No, look here. Look at me. Look at this strawberry I'm holding. Silas, look. Ruby, my eyes! Look here! Do you see this strawberry? See how it's red? This is what we're picking today. Calvin, please stop throwing them into the bowl. Look at my eyes. You can't throw them so hard. They are fragile. Put down the rock. One! Two! Okay, is everyone listening?"

Et.

Cetera.

But we eventually sorta rallied. We got it done. It was fun, and who gives a rip if I stained my jeans?

Sister-friend's eyes are half-closed, but it felt important to show you her outfit.
This girl. She's just so rad.

Favorite nose EVER!
She has been rocking that scarf every which way today. I'm way impressed. Calvin, too.

So yeah, I'm a city girl now.
But these cows, these barns, these rusty gates and all the spigots in the universe fill my veins.
They bring me to life in a different way, a really loud way, the calmest way ever.

I'm so thankful for all of it, for the buckled sidewalk of my new-ordinary days and the wide-sky sigh found just a handful of miles from here.

I'll take 'em both, thank you. This and that.
I don't have to choose.
I can be a farmgirl in the city and I can love every minute of it and never ever feel like a fraud.

We're complicated people, right? We're a little bit towny, a little bit rock-a-billy.
It's the only way to roll.

Lay it on me, how was your Friday?
Hope you found yourself a little wonder.
And if not? Tomorrow's so ripe.

First Day Vacay

2013-06-04T20:21:00.000-04:00

Today was our first "real" day of summer vacation. The stakes are high on the first day, man. There's a delicate balance between having a little fun and setting the bar too high, because the last thing I need is a houseful of kid who expect Mama Day Camp for ten straight weeks.

Just to keep us all grounded in reality, our first official outing was taking Calvin to his math tutor.

The drive over was...somber. For some reason math tutoring just didn't top his summer vacation list. But...his tutor saved the day. I knew she would. They studied out on her glorious deck and he was all smiles 30 minutes later.

I rewarded him and everyone by taking them grocery shopping!

Again - not excited. Not even a tinge.

But there was produce to be bought. Which brings me to this: In a span of 7 hours this household has consumed: 2 heads of broccoli, 1 mango, 1 bag of cherries, 1 box of "gourmet" tomatoes, and half a bag of baby carrots.

We're going to have to start eating out more or we'll go broke.

We packed a lunch and rode bikes to the park across the way. In a cruel twist of fate, I was wearing my bell bottom jeans and they kept getting twisted in the chain, so I did what any savvy biker mom would do and hiked the bells up past my knobby knees. My kids are so lucky I'm theirs!

The Smalls were all raves over their turkey and cheese sandwiches. Amazed, even. We stayed for almost two hours and they played and behaved like a trio of cherubim, minus the extra eyes. And then they all went mad. Silas wielded a rogue plastic hanging basket hook, eerily resembling a cat of 3 tails. Calvin and Ruby fought to the pain over "the spinning thing", etc...

We packed it up and headed home for the dreaded QT, after which we all bounced back a little.

This was dinner, and it's my favorite thing in the entire universe, next to ataulfo mangoes. And salsa.

I like to call it JFlo's Magical Tomatoes because the recipe came from her.
Here's the recipe, copied exactly the way she sent it.

3 lrg tomatoes sliced thick

1/3 c olive oil

1/4 c red wine vinegar (I use balsamic)

1 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1/2 clove garlic minced (seriously? throw the whole thing in)

2 T. chopped onion (I like red, because it's pretty)

1 T. chopped fresh parsley

1 T chopped fresh basil

Arrange tomatoes in bowl. Combine remaining ingredients in a jar and shake well. Pour over tomato and refrigerate several hours.

I add fresh mozz, as you know, but it's not in this orig. recipe.

Enjoy!!

Tomorrow I'm banking on more of the same, all the way around.
It's good to be Summering.

PS - Cory's first day was stellar! Thanks for the prayers.

Ever yours,
FPFG

A New Page Turns

2013-06-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

The truth is, we've spent the last four days here in Ohio lazing around and not combing our hair. We've been napping in the afternoon and eating salsa after dark. Grilling, shopping, double dating. I splurged and bought the coolest mirror at Marshalls on clearance for $39, because I'm in that vacation frame of mind.

The truth behind the truth is, we're acting like we're on some kind of snazzy family vacation because we can, and it might be a while before we get the chance again. Big change awaits us on the flip-side of this trip.

Do you ever get tired of me saying that big change is coming?
Me, too.

But this is one of the greatest truths I've learned over the past 3 years: God doesn't leave us sitting still for long. I used to clamp my eyes shut through the wild waves of change, just waiting for still waters. Now I live a little seasick, and it feels like a lifeboat.

We've been in our new home for ten months. Just shy of one year. But we're settled in. We love this chapter. It fits, and it didn't take long at all to notice.

But where I used to exhale when the dust started to settle, I now start opening doors, peering around corners, watching the horizon line.

This is the life I was meant to live - at least today, but probably not forever, because if there's one thing I know for sure it's that as soon as things start to seem normal, a shake-down happens. I'm fine with that. It lends a certain air of adventure to life. - Yours Truly,February, 2013

I had no idea back in February what might happen in June. I couldn't have possibly guessed. If I had, I'd have sold us all short. I'd have settled for what I thought was right and missed out on part of the great romance that God already wrote for us, the one He laid out for us in baby-steps, all sly like a fox. He wooed us toward a future that once seemed foreign and now looks just like a foregone conclusion.

So, in hindsight, it all makes perfect sense. (Hindsight is a friend that way.)

Tomorrow, my husband Cory, takes over as the chaplain for our county jail.

It's so ridiculous and so amazing and I'm bowled over by the kindness of our Savior. I'm in awe at the way he so expertly positions us to do the work He has for us. I'm so grateful I was wrong when I thought God's call was a thing worth dreading or that living a life on mission meant probably never being happy.

Cory has knocked every job he's had out of the park. They used to be what the world might call "important", or "special". He earned a nice living, wore suits to work every day. Heck, he met the President - twice.

But I watched a secret part of him come alive when he went to work at The Crossin g. From there we met Robert and then Haven and our life would be incomplete without them. From there we began to see our disenfranchised brothers and sisters through a new lens of love. We started sharing ourselves with new kinds of people and felt our ideas about family stretch and bend. His neckties grew lonely in the closet and his paycheck shrank, but our world began to tilt and we liked the view from where we stood - on the crest of a new understanding that maybe we had learned to value the wrong things.

It's dizzying to unlearn life. It's magical, too.

We're T-24 and I still don't know how to process this. I don't know what to expect and I'm trying not to guess.

The responsibility on his shoulders looks mountainous compared to juggling the schedules of important political figures. He's now the pastor for over 600 criminals. What I know for sure is that these people are hurting. They are wounded. Broken. They are alone. They've largely lived in poverty and dysfunction. They've been labeled and condemned. They have been wrong, just like me. They have failed, just like me. They need love. They need Jesus, just like me.

God has lavished His love on Cory by placing him where his heart beats loudest. It stuns me to think that we might have missed all of this if we had chosen to walk past every little step that made this a no-brainer.

At the risk of wearing you out with prayer requests, could you remember Cory tomorrow? And the days after that?

I'm so excited to watch his work begin. I can't wait to live another chapter with the man who reminds me every single day that obedience isn't the hard thing I sometimes make it.

"A saint's life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and again the saint says - 'I cannot stand any more.' God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God's hands." - Oswald Chambers, The Patience of Faith from My Utmost for His Highest

The Reason I Feel Giddy and Additional Genius

2013-06-01T07:00:00.000-04:00

I've come home!

I say that because:
A. It's officially June.
B. I'm in Ohio.
C. I just ate La Fiesta salsa.
D. All of the above.

We all know, the answer is D.

Get ready, friends. It's summertime and being here for less than 2 days has proven to me that I need no other vacation destination. This place. If I could pack you all up and let you experience it with me, I would. You'd better believe it.

It's green. And quiet. And nostalgic.
It's peaceful.

The kids play outside and watch cartoons and we all eat like a pack of mad fools.

We see old friends. We hunker down.

I'm just saying. Get ready for more Ohio than you ever knew you needed.

My Dad had back surgery yesterday and it was a success. Cory babysat him last night at the hospital so Grandma could come home and soak up more time with the Littles. (They appear to have her firmly in their grip.)

So today is setting up to be epic in a very mundane/fantastic way.

Meanwhile, I've been saving up some important things to share.

1. The Drop Box
There's no easy way to share this here, so you're going to have to click the link and watch. It's like 3 minutes long. It might make you cry, especially if you're the mama of 2 Korean boys. But mostly, it will remind you of the sweetness of humanity. It will remind you that we're united in purpose with brothers and sisters across the globe, and we're all fighting for the same thing - the prevailing of Love over darkness.

2. When Everyone is Just So Pretty and Stylish - by Andrea Howe
I've been feeling fashiony again. It comes in fits. Andrea's words here make so much sense to me, especially during a season when I'm buying very little. It's freeing to begin to understand my "look", what really works for me, what I'm happy and comfortable in, and go from there. (Is this what it means to be pushing 40? Don't answer that.)

3. How to Wash and Whiten Yellowed Pillows - by One Good Thing
Okay, don't be mad that I'm giving you chores on a Saturday. It's just that this begs to be shared because I did it. And it worked. Disclaimer: I pulled the pillows out of the washing machine and cursed life. But 1.5 cycles in the dryer with tennis balls? You don't even know. My pillows are sparkling new. It's kind of a pain to do the whole thing, but mostly it's awesome because it's (quasi) instant gratification. And they smell fantabulous. You will sleep like a newborn. These pillows will bless your dreams. Am I going overboard here? Perhaps.

4. Life from a Lemon - by my homegirl, Heather Hendrick
Heather has been sharing their journey to healthier eating, specifically, how to do it with kids. This post just speaks to my soul. I'm so serious. It's genius, in that obvious way. Calvin would eat this straight up. Pun intended. Retroactively.

What's the best thing you learned this week?

Schoooool's Out!

2013-05-29T21:46:00.000-04:00

Last day of school - 2013

My babies dared to graduate Kindergarten and 2nd grade. Their report cards made me misty. They have both worked so hard and we had tons of transition this year. I'm SO proud of them! Ruby's teacher said she is a leader in her class. I can't think of anything I would rather hear. And Calvin's teacher said how his class gained so much by him sharing his story with them. (The first week of school he asked his teacher if she would hang his Korean flag in their room. She totally did. So, even though over half the class is Hispanic, Korea was represented along with the American flag.) :)

It's true - I look at this photo and I feel a little twitchy about the next ten weeks. That kid in the middle is made of part dynamite - especially combustible when mixed with the dude on the right.

But I'm determined to do my best to have a happy and relatively peaceful, fun summer.

In a completely unrelated sidenote (cough cough) Silas will be attending his "old school" one morning a week. It will keep him in the school groove, but it will also give the rest of us an important break. If cash grew on trees, he would go two mornings a week. Keepin' it real. I used to feel so much angst about this kind of thing, but I'm here to tell you, if you have a really challenging kid - a break is good for everyone. Every. One. I'm so thankful that we have the option of a local daycare that will let him come on a really limited basis. They saved us last year and they'll do it again this summer.

Silas is pretty pumped about it, as long as "I don't hafta sleep they-a." (He napped twice there last year and it was quite traumatic apparently.)

I wanted to find a fun surprise for the kiddos for after school today...

Cue tiny cans of Pepsi! Whoa. Caffeine pop.
Ruby's surprise was the watermelon, which was probably a bit anti-climactic.
Calvin's surprise: Personal Shrimp Ring!

I mean, come on.
You can't make this kid up.
He's addicted to seafood.

But back to our summer plans.
This was our "Summer List" from 2011. (I don't think I even bothered last year in the rental. Lame.)

I loved the idea of this list and we did most of the stuff on it, but I grow loosier and goosier with every passing year. I fly more by the seat of my pants. I feel like a colorful To-Do list is still a To-Do list, and I feel like that might make me angsty.

So...I reinvented it.
These are the kinds of things we want to spend our time doing. When we do one? We'll write it down under the category.

We're also logging the number of times we go on bike rides and get ice cream.

(Sidenote: Silas drew the "sunglasses" down in the left hand corner.)

Finishing touches...

Excitement is building...

(new consignment store gingham! can't not give it a shout-out.)

Ta-Da!

This picture also serves as an important "After" shot. (See first photo of the post.)
Summer haircuts - a family tradition!

(I know you probably don't usually click through on all my random links, but that one will be worth your time AND I need you to help me understand why Silas appears to have aged zero percent in TWO years??! It's also really funny.)

So that's our plan, Stan.

Vacation starts tomorrow!
First stop: Doctor appointment for Calvin! Yay!

:/

What's your Summer plan? Do you do a list? Does it give you hives? Am I just an aging weirdo?

Tuesday

2013-05-28T23:13:00.000-04:00

1) Guys, I just did my first Piloxing class.
If you know me at all, you know this is a little legendary. I was so worried, I had a nightmare about it last night. I am wicked uncoordinated and flimsy and gangly. This body is not accustomed to bouncing about. Or boxing. Or Piloxing.

I was hoping Piloxing involved a pillow. And a blanket. And a darkened room.

Not so.

I hated it. I glared at the instructor once and she seems liked a really nice girl. One time she made us extend our left leg up and out after an hour of piloxing and then said, "Alright, hold it!" and I said, "Nope." I said it. I meant it.

But I never had to stop all the way like I thought I would and true, I have some kind of undiagnosed moving disability, I lack all perceivable rhythm, I can't move my arms in fast circles while I bounce around rhythmically on my legs. BUT I DID IT.

I'm going back.
Probably.

2) Just this guy. He wants mac and cheese every day. (He gets it on Thursdays...if he gets a gummy worm at pre-school. It's a long story.) (The worm has been withheld a few times. Don't remind him.) He is obsessed with containers. 12-27 times a day he says, "Can I have that bottle (can, box, etc...) when it's all gone? Spice bottles are his kryptonite. He's currently pining over my coveted bottle of Spring Chicken Serum. He checks it daily and he'll be danged if it's not diminishing quickly enough. It's the dropper. Sends him right over the edge.

3) I found the perfect blush. Rimmel Apricot. I found it in my old make-up bag. I think it's bogus that make-up goes "bad". It's a conspiracy. There's probably a youtube video floating around somewhere... I recently re-discovered Rimmel Apricot, and with it - my cheek bones! It's perfection. Also, it's discontinued. Not helpful, right? But maybe check your old make-up bag...

4) I have a strange fascination with arugula. I don't know. It's peppery. At first you'll think you hate it...and then you'll realize you love it. Need it. I bought a bunch last week at the farmer's market and the cute lady had a stack of photo-copied, hand-written recipe cards for Arugular Salad. (I keep typing "arugular"...it's like I'm Simon Cowell and I can't even help it.) Of course I took one AND I made the salad. It was phenomenal.

6 oz. fresh arugular
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
3-4 sectioned oranges (you have to cut the membranes off. Membranes??? Sick! Sorry.)
1/3 c grated Asiago or Gorgonzola (she underlined "or" twice, so I took liberties and subbed goat cheese. It didn't seem like a deal-breaker.)
Dressing:
1/3 c squeezed orange juice
1/4 c olive oil or canola oil
1 T dijon mustard
1 T white wine vinegar
1/4 tsp salt

5) My little lady has been slaying me lately. She's so princessy and twirly and tough. The best little helper. I think I'm gonna keep her. She sleeps in the strangest positions. My neck kinks at the thought. She tries hard at things and asks Silas to play. Sometimes she prays, "help me to be nicer" and it kills me, because she's the nicest. She made every bed in the house today just to surprise me. The girl just rocks my flip-flops off. That's all.

I feel like 5 is a good place to stop. You know I could go on all night here... Don't even make me prove it.

If you don't hear from me for a few days it's because I'm stuck in my bed and can't get out on account of the Piloxing. Please send salsa.

Why City Living is Beautiful, Too

2013-05-27T20:18:00.003-04:00

It's Memorial Day. We hung our flag and ate the requisite hamburger. I wiped my eyes when the wrinkled veterans stood in church and for all of the conflict I feel these days about this world, it's true - I was sitting on that pew because of the sacrifice of others.

We partied all weekend. I baked this coffee cake last night after midnight. (Also, this and this. It was a good night.)

Somewhere around 4pm today, we lost our steam. We lost it all. Poof. Gone. Fork. Done. Etc...
The gray skies and rain didn't help. So we did what any sensible family would do. We bathed the kids at 4:30, Ramen noodles at 5, Silas to bed at 6, Biggers at 6:30. I AM SO FOR REAL.

And this, friends, is me in a nut-shell. Give me 3 late nights in a row and extra sweets in between. Sit me at a table with friends for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But on the 4th day? I'll get a far-away look in my eyes and pretend not to hear you when you speak.

I'm an introvert.

Some of my friends don't believe me, but it's true. I'm a hybrid, you know. A solid 65:35.

So of course, I was always meant to live in the country. Perhaps even the prairie, although I hear it's hard to come by authentic Mexican food on the prairie, so maybe not.

I thought any town with more than one stoplight was engineered by sadists.

All I wanted, all my life, was a big white farmhouse at the end of a medium-long lane.

Something like this.

I wanted to mind my own business and I thought it'd be great if everyone else did the same.

I wanted family dinner 6 nights out of 7, and I when I said "family", I only counted 5.

I wanted just me, just my people, just my own garden and my own peonies and my own clean fences (make them picket).

I wanted the simple life.

Imagine my surprise when I got all of those things and realized it was only chapter 1.

I don't remember exactly what I thought city living would be like, but I knew it would be a tight fit. We could do it, I could suffer for the cause (what exactly was the cause???) but I wouldn't do it happy. There'd be no more pictures to take. The fields that surrounded us like a hug would be long-gone.

Noise - there'd be lots of noise. And people.

It wouldn't be pretty.

It turns out, I was right about the noise and the people. Wrong about the beauty.
It turns out, the rumble of a train and a knock on our door are more beautiful than a quiet line of nights spent turned inward.

I understand the Suburban urge to retreat to the country, where the clock ticks slower and the cookies never burn. I framed the idea of peaceful solitude and nailed it to my heart. I equated stillness with rest and rest with God. I believed in my soul that I would find more of Him between trips to my raspberry bushes, our sheets flapping in the breeze.

I didn't know I'd find him in faces and scars.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
It seems pretty dang obvious now.

His hand is on this land, and because this is where He sent us, we feel it stronger here. We watch strangers become kin and we find Him. We turn away, swear that we need a break, feel that pang of guilt, and we find Him there, showing us our own messed-up hearts while He keeps on loving us anyway.

He was never hidden in the flowers and fruit of the life I lived then. I saw Him in creation, all around me, very sure I stood in His palm. And I did. But He's here, too. I couldn't trust it until I saw it for myself.

What I know now is that His beauty is everywhere. Hayfields and painted barns don't own the rights. It's etched on brick and sprayed on steel.

I don't have to look past the city-ness of the city to find it. The city-ness IS the gift. Where His children are multiplied, so is His grace. And that's here, where kids cast and reel hurt and affection, where they scream down the sidewalks after dark, where they knock on my door when I'm tired.

This is the simple life, where people are immune to being impressed, where the hardest work required is the turning of a knob.

This is His wit and charm, His perfect winsomeness and His clever way of turning my stubborn shoulders around so I can see the fullness of context, contrast, community.

So I can see more of Him.

"The city is making us realize that sameness is a failure...Maybe, just maybe, God will use the city to remind us that all his unique individual masterpieces clustered together in high rises and housing projects and neighborhoods bear a reflection of his original design. Perhaps it will be in the city that the church will rediscover the richness of diversity interacting in hard-earned unity."
- Theirs is the Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America by Robert D. Lupton

*All links are Amazon Affiliate links.

Around Here

2013-05-23T22:17:00.002-04:00

(Around here, it's always 10:25.) :)

We're in that famous wind-down. I'm tripping along between believing summer is around the corner and trying not to rush it. Same song, different tune. The story of my life.

We're planting tomatoes and thinking about beans. I'm excited about the possibilities of our little wonky yard, but I feel like I need to start seeing tangible, quantifiable progress being made. And yes, I'm a super fun, easy-going wife. Why do you ask?? I just get weird, guys. That's all. I get all amped up about something and before I know it, I'm worried that it'll be over soon. Meanwhile, it hasn't even started yet. I have a gift-card for a massage that I got for Christmas but I'm afraid to use it because then it'll be, well, gone. I've started saving my Country Living mags for a month before reading them because I just like to know they're there. That's how I'm being about summer right now. It's annoying, even for me.

So yes, there's still time for the beans. There's time for the patio, even.

We've been yakking around about it for a few weeks, but inspiration finally struck this week in the likeliest of places.

Just stop it, Meg. Stop your radness, already. Stop your chippiness and your container gardens and your bunting. You're making me covet.

Long story short, I want to copy the whole nine yards.

Speaking of copying, we've got an outbreak of it around here. Cannot even tell you how many times a day I hear, "He's copying me!" "Stop copying me!"

WHY does every kid at some point find unparalleled glee from copying their brothers/sisters/bosses????

And now, some Howard. This is a blurry pic of Howard sitting at his "office", set up for him by our resident tech geek, Silas.

Oh my word, I don't even really like pets. Don't hate. Don't hate.

I'm just not animaly. But I die for this right now. I showed it to Calvin and we both cackled like twin church ladies. It's too much cuteness, even for me. I hope my mom and Holly aren't reading this because they won't possibly be able to handle it.

The thing is, Howard escaped yesterday morning. It was a tricky scenario and there was some finger pointing, but it was an accident. Dude bolted. It happened right before the kids left for school and it was just so upsetting for everyone.

We prayed and I told them to keep praying, but I wasn't feeling confident that we'd ever see him again.

All morning Silas fretted and stewed. He asked if we could pray again.
You'll have to sit down for this, because I memorized it then real-quick copied it down.

Dear Lord help Howard come safely home and thank you for our wonderful cat and him to come back to us and thank you he is a bootiful cat and he's our best cat ever and that he can come home soon to be back in our family and thank you for our love to be good in Jesus' name Amen.

Then I very nicely prayed, "God, thank you that you always hear our prayers" but in my head I was gritting my teeth, all, "God, you have a big opportunity here to show these kids that you're real and you mean business. Don't you even think of not bringing Howard back to us, because this doesn't feel like the right kind of day for 'God always hears, but sometimes he does the opposite of what we ask'. Amen."

One hour later I was standing at the sink, getting ready to make tuna melts for a friend. I cracked the lid off the can of tuna and that very second, I kid you not, I heard Howard whining outside.

The prodigal had returned. Hallelujah. I almost teared up, and that's no joke.

I emailed Calvin's teacher and asked if she could let him know, because it was only lunch time and a soul like his can only take so many hours of worrying. (Can I say one more time how much I love my kids' teachers? They are the BEST.)

Speaking of teachers, we're doing this teacher gift. $3 each. And super cute. Hot dang. I think I'll keep you, Pinterest.

Last thing. Or as Silas says, "Last more."

My presentation on Monday night went so, so well. Thank you to all who sent some prayers along! I rode over with my friend Jessica and it's been a long time since we've had 90 uninterrupted minutes to talk. All the chattering kept my mind off my gig. It was perfect.

In the end, I went over my allotted time.

What? You're not shocked???

I also cried about eighteen times, several of which required me to focus intently on the clock hanging in the back of the room in an attempt to thwart the all-out ugly.

But it seemed like the people in the room were really listening. Maybe like they were even understanding. It was such a reminder to me that God is crazy-alive in each of our stories. And when we share them, His power reigns down. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to share the one I've been given.

This is the only shot I got of me speaking.

Okay, fine! You win! It's staged! We didn't know what to do, so we faked it up after. FINE!
(You can tell it's a fake because I'm smiling and not weeping...)

Also? My mom surprised me and drove almost 3 hours with a friend of hers to watch me. Best Mom EVER!

Cory is still at work right now, the kids are all in bed. I have a tub of salsa calling my name and I might go ahead and start a movie, because Sarah said The Odd Life of Timothy Green made her bawl so I'm curious to see if it works on me.

(Around here, we always stay up late.)

Hey-Hey! Tomorrow's Friday! Long-weekend Friday! Let's plan a party or something.

Ever Yours,
FPFG

It's Just Me, the Activist

2013-05-21T21:51:00.001-04:00

Cory and I used to watch the local evening news regularly. We watched mostly for kicks, having already gotten the pertinent stories of the day online. But, you know, there's the ever-important weatherman in his dorky tie and once we were lucky enough to catch a reporter screaming and cursing at her videographer while she thought the camera wasn't rolling.

Then, there would be the activists, marching around because of inadequate parking or an unfair ruling. We'd roll our eyes and wonder if they knew how silly they looked and if they truly believed they were changing anything.

A few months ago there was a homicide/suicide just down our street. It happened at 8:30 on a Monday morning on the sidewalk, broad daylight, two houses down from Silas's pre-school. Concerned calls and texts came in, but we were fine. It was a whole half mile away.

Still, the news was shocking and I wore the shove and drag of darkness around like a veil.

We were unsettled. It wasn't that we were afraid for our own lives, but that the thick pulse of humanity and all its pain, all of its confusion rose up around us. The corners that we try to hide from crept out of the shadows and I could see the chain connecting death and life. I remembered (again) the reality of that tension, as real and unnoticed as the turning of the world we stand on.

A month or so later, just 2 blocks away this time, there was a drive-by shooting. We heard the shots from our couch and wondered why someone was lighting fireworks on a Sunday night.

4 teenagers were shot, no one killed. They said it was gang related, made sure we all knew that it wasn't random violence.

But I imagine the barrel of a gun hanging out the passenger side of a Chevy, I imagine bullet casings landing on the same grass Calvin and Ruby play on at recces, and it sounds pretty random to me. Random enough.

When we heard about the neighborhood parade, we didn't think twice. We knew we might be some of the only ones who showed. We knew it was strange, even for us.

But this is our community and these are our people. They are lovely and hurting. They feel forgotten and unnoticed. They've become something worth standing up for, and we don't even know many of their names.

Our beautiful church rallied around this effort, even though none of them live here. Our pastor reminded us that this is why we're here, and of course I cried. Robert teases me about being a cry baby and fine, it's true. God has pummeled my heart and it now it bleeds with every passing breeze.

So I cried because my children didn't think it was weird and because the dear man at my church told me on Sunday, "This isn't something we would normally do, but we're going to try it!". I cried because Haven and baby Avery came with us and it did all our hearts good. I cried because I'm so proud of my husband, who led us here with courage and conviction. I cried because there was a stinking band, and displaced bands almost always make me cry.

So many people showed up, moms and grandpas. We walked in the heat, passed flowers to the ladies on their stoops and candy to the kids. We carried our signs and pushed strollers and I took it all in.

This is community. It's what I never knew I needed. These are my brothers and sisters, my surrogate family. They are the ones who have welcomed us without question or explanation.

I always had a hunch that we would be changed by what we found here, but I couldn't have guessed how quickly or completely that change would fall.

It's amazing to me that in stepping out of our comfort zone, we landed where we've never been more at home.

Our kids know the concept of drive-by shootings now, and that's okay. It's okay for them to see from a low vantage point that darkness lurks, because every time those shadows shift, it's an opportunity to remind them that God is with us. He's in us.

So tie a daisy in my braids, I'm practically a legit hippie now.

Did we change anything? Really change it?
I don't know that we did. I doubt any gang members changed their ways because we handed them a pack of Skittles.

But maybe this spinning globe filled with people craving hope can be distilled down to one little neighborhood on a hill. Maybe a human race filled with empty hearts is the same as that young family standing wary at their door, emanating pain in our wake.

I keep wondering what made them open that door. I keep wondering if I'll ever see the other side of it.
Maybe they were reason enough.

I have hope for Chamberlain neighborhood. I know His name and that His heart throbs for all of us. I know that Love lives here, recognize it or not.

God Bless the Salad and Other Updates

2013-05-19T22:55:00.000-04:00

I present to you our favorite Saturday dinner. It's some kind of Cobb salad, since it has avocado and bacon. At least that's what I tell myself. It's also part-Nicoise on account of the potatoes (boil, smash, drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, roast until crispy).

I'll shout it from my high horse: I love a good salad!

But the salad was really just the beginning, because Calvin did get his yellow belt. My tiny little baby kicked a board in half with his foot and we were all so stinking proud.

We got our garden planted with help from our new friends Brad and Deb. They totally deserve a pair of shiny crowns or at least a couple of sashes. Their kindness made me cry a little. They are our people now, a new and beautiful part of the community God gifted us with when He sent us here on what seemed like a lark. We shouldn't be so surprised by His goodness. Thank you guys!

And then...I found a bike at Chain Reaction! A vintage American Eagle. Oh boy, did I ever waffle. Because there was a turquoise bike and a green bike and then the AE, in a drab bronzey olive. The two men running the shop probably wanted to smack me with a spoke half-way through my deliberations. I finally confessed that I sort of hoped for one in a prettier color. They smirked and pretended to understand. In the end, I did what I never ever do and erred on the side of practicality. I know. In her defense, she had shiny fenders and will pair nicely with a hot pink or coral basket. And yes, she's a she, even though she's drab. I have vowed to love her forever, just the way she is.

Then today? Prison run. With the two cutest baby boys on the planet.
Robert is growing ~~dreds~~ dreads, people. And I love them. He's so handsome with his little baby dreds! (Do not tell him I called them little baby dreds. Even though that's what they are...now.)

I can't stop thanking God that Robert took us as his parents. Such a gift. The usually sober guard came to our table to see the babies and I know a window when I see one, so I asked if he gives her trouble and watched in amazement as she grinned and, dare I say - giggled. Our boy, he's a charmer. I'm so proud of him. He passed his big test this past week and I shrieked like a maniac when he called to give us the news. Dude is smart and amazing.

Life is good, you know? I'm a lucky lady.

Now here's where you come in - I need your help. Friends and countrymen, I have a speaking gig tomorrow night (Monday, 6:30 pm). Like, with a podium and a microphone. I'm sharing a big part of our story at Fairview Missionary in Angola, IN. I enjoy public speaking and did quite a bit of it in my former life, but it has been a while. And I always get clammy right before I start. If you think about it, would you shoot a prayer my way? And if you're in the area, come out and join us!

We just got off the phone with Robert and he offered some advice:

Robert: Let me tell you a trick I learned because you know, I've done a lot of public speaking (giggle). Don't try to think about it, but just keep telling yourself that they're not gonna call your name. Then when they do, just go up there and start talking.

Me: But I know they're going to call my name because I'm the only speaker.

Robert: No you're not.

:)

Robert: Just make sure you don't forget your speech.

Me: I'm showing them a picture of you, is that okay?

Robert: Yeah. As long as I look good in it.

Me: Have you ever looked bad in a picture?

Robert: Good point.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Until then...Happy Mondaying, friends!

You Thought I Was Done?

2013-05-17T21:40:00.001-04:00

Every now and then, I have a smart idea. Sometimes it's gingham and ikat, sometimes it's bed coverings as curtains. On this night? Our lone group shot.

(ps - Those are the new favorite shorts.)

So. We went mini golfing one evening after Early Bird dinner. Because we're wild like that.
It was super fun and not just because I came in second (out of 4 - haha) but because Cory was pulling out some really messed up moves. He was a hot mess. Emphasis on hot.

There was another foursome right ahead of us. In my mind they were a full generation older than us, but that's because I often still think I'm in my early twenties instead of my late thirties (true story). They were having the most miserable time. No laughing. No inappropriate humor. Men on one side, women on the other. Drab footwear. It was depressing.

Can we all vow right now to never turn into that? Scout's honor.

I miss my friend. 5 days together and then BOOM. She was gone.
I ran into her last night unexpectedly at the grocery (score!). She was looking all cute in her rad pixie and the cutest skirt. I told her, "I always LOVE that skirt." She looked at me strangely..."I bought it from you. At your garage sale."

hahaha. I honestly don't remember ever owning it. I just remember loving it when she wears it. The more we talked, I vaguely remembered it. But I don't remember liking it when I owned it. (Hence the garage sale?) In a million years I could not have told you that she bought it from my sale. Did I even have a garage sale?? I'm not convinced.

This is just how life is for me and my everyday people. It's not as funny in person. It's more, "You need to get more sleep, Shannan."

This was my last night of vacay, when I had given up. 3 evenings of looking cute had taken their toll. I was spent. So I wore a weird outfit and didn't do my hair.

It turns out, I should never have packed the Blue Dress for No Dang Reason. After wearing it with knit tights, a cardigan, and tall boots, I felt downright scandalous for the 3 minutes I donned it solo.

So I tried on a new dress I'd bought at Target a month ago. It's short in the front a long in the back. You know, a mullet dress. When I first spotted it, I thought it seemed like the quirkiest find ever. So I nabbed it. Then I saw youngsters everywhere sporting the look and it lost some of its sheen. On second glance, it was a giant arrow pointing straight to my chicken legs which were now partially sunburned (left knee cap, left side of right calf, lower right ankle. Don't ask.)

In the end: my gray knit skirt and a t-shirt that keeps narrowly escaping the Goodwill pile.

But at least we had the sunset.

Say it with me, "Awwwww!"

Let's speed this up a bit. One line captions!

"No comment."

"The tree stands alone."

"Dude looks sketchy."

"Sidewalk to Heaven."

"I hate tourists."

"I hope the lady doesn't remember that this is my third night in a row of mocha almond fudge."

Cholesterol free! Lactose free!
Or Gourmet.
DUH.

And last but not least...

Some traditions beg to be kept.

So there. I'm done.

I'm getting ready now to hunker down with the season finale of Scandal. Tomorrow is a crazy-hectic day, but I'm banking on it being the good kind of busy. Garden planting, garage saleing, and Calvin tests for his yellow belt!

What's on your agenda?

What I Wore and... A BIG Announcement!

2013-05-15T20:04:00.003-04:00

Friends, I'm here to share the good, the bad, and the ugly about what I wore on vacation.

Let's start with the ugly, shall we? Then it's all down hill from here. I mean up hill.

Down hill.

Down hill?

I bought a proper cover-up. Old Navy. Full price! 30 fat smackers. I know. I get a little twitchy when I pay full price for anything, anymore. I have to really love it.

Guess what? I don't really love this. I thought I did.

But then I wore it for 4 days in blazing, sweltering Florida and I realized something that had previously eluded me: It has sleeves. 3/4 sleeves. (I cuffed them up by day 2. See above.)

All I really know is, it's pinstriped and gauzy and it has pockets.

Fun fact: the waist in these types of items never hits me at the right place. They're always creeping up, veering dangerously on empire. (If you're Stacy London, you pronounce this "ompeer". You're welcome.)

Fun fact 2: I am awkward in photos. For the life of me, I never know what to do with my arms. This shot cracks me up because I thought I had moved past the classic "hand on hip". Apparently not. Don't I look natural? Like I'm not even posing???

You know what else is awkward? When you brag about finally buying a proper swim suit cover up then you go to link up to it and find that it's a dress.

Is this weird? Because it feels like it is, or like it could get there quickly. In my defense, it's made of gauze. But it does explain the sleeves.

Okay, nevermind the me-ness of this picture. Nevermind the wadded up dress and the cup of undetermined contents hiding out in the shade of my lounger. Check out the suit. That SUIT! Gads, I love that flipping suit. It's the one I found on our Fancy Spring Vacation for $30 with the original $156 tags intact.

It's infinitely easier to pay $30 when you know you're getting a deal.

This suit is the perfect floral, the perfect cut. It's a tankini that somehow covers my free-range torso. I have to say, it feels a mite fancy. It's practically couture. I wish the bottoms were one size larger, but what the biz. It works well enough.

Note: I read this book. I had never read it before! Go ahead and gasp. Everyone I tell gasps. "You didn't have to read this in honors Lit in High School?" Well, no. For one thing, there was no honors Lit at my High School. There was also no Lit. There was English class. We graduated 43 in my class and my science teacher had also been my mom's science teacher. (That is neither her nor there, but it seems somehow relevant.) There were no options. Like zero. And see how well I turned out??

Note 2: I'm not trying to be cool in my purple fedora (Target clearance), so you don't have to feel embarrassed for me. It's just that I feared for the well-being of my forehead. Andy told me I looked like Michael Jackson. I took it as a compliment.

The Skirt. Millions upon tens of you asked about it in the last post, and I'm afraid I won't be much help. I bought it a year or two ago at Dear Old Navy. I'm sure it was on sale, although I do truly love it, so perhaps not? We'll never know.

My favorite skill is mixing gingham with, well, anything. This combo especially pleases me. I'm here to tell you: Navy and white gingham is a neutral. Try to disprove me!

The necklace was found years ago at Target, I think.

It's important to note that this was the first full night of vacay, when I was still making an effort to be cute. (i.e. I styled my hair.)

I also fell deeply in love with a few products on this trip and I wouldn't think of keeping them from you.

1. Maybelline Color Whisper lipstick in Pin Up Peach Shiny and sheer and light and perfectly peach
2. Essence roll-on perfume oil by Maddie and Sophie This fragrance? Is the bomb. I had the opportunity to try a few of the new "gluten-free vegetarian glam" products by Maddie and Sophie and I died for this on roll ONE. I'll wear this forever. It's compact and long-lasting and it smells SO dreamy. Timi helped me test it and she loved it, too. We also glitzed around in their Gloss/Glow duo. It also smelled unbelievable and shined and softened us right up. Perfect for the beach or, you know, the neighborhood. Whatevs.

Maddie and Sophie are offering FPFG readers 20% off all orders using the code FPFG. (put code in comments section and the discount will be refunded to your account)

Hey - when all else fails? Grab an indigenous bloom.

You can't see it here, but I'm wearing my favorite new shorts. They're long and perfectly slouchy with a button fly. It makes me happy, this button fly.

(cuff via Farmgirl Paints)

(green bracelet via 31 Bits - part of the swag from Craft Weekend!)

Whew.
We made it.

Now. Back in September at the Influence conference I had the privilege of meeting two super cool cats, Barrett and Marisa. In a sea of unfamiliar faces both of theirs made a huge impression on me in one of those ways that you notice. Through them I became aware of their amazing work in Ethiopia with Mocha Club and fashionABLE. I signed up to be a fashionABLE affiliate (this means I get a small percentage of sales in exchange for advertising and selling their wares) because their video made me bawl my eyes out the first time I watched it. The work they are doing is redemptive and life-giving. I wanted to be a part of it. I told you about their amazing scarves around Christmas time, having no inkling that 5 months later, they would ask me to join them in Ethiopia, along with 9 others, on their "blogABLE" trip. To serve in this capacity has been a bloglong dream of mine, and the one dream that I always felt might eventually come to pass.

It will be my high honor to bring the stories of these women back to you, come August. I am thrilled and excited and slightly nerve-wracked about the responsibility of sharing these lives with sensitivity and clarity. I'm thrilled to be a part of the team and even more excited to "take" you with me.

About a Girl

2013-05-15T07:03:00.000-04:00

I'm thrilled to share this space today with my friend Emily Wierenga who, along with Dr. Dena Cabrera, recently published Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy, a poignant and important look at restoring healthy body image in women. Though I haven't experienced pregnancy, I am a woman hauling around the complicated baggage of learning to love and accept exactly who I was created to be. I'm also a woman with a precious daughter of my own. I want to do justice to the honor of mothering her. I want her to understand her beauty much sooner than I understood my own.

Soak up Emily's poetry-words and leave a comment below to enter the giveaway for a free copy.

Maybe it’s one of the reasons I whisper hallelujah each time I find a boy in my womb growing long and limber, although I know eating disorders are just as real for them, 25 per cent real in fact, and we just don’t realize it…

That men sometimes hide in toilet bowls and candy wrappers and weigh scales, but 75 % of women struggle with disordered eating and I never really wanted to have a girl. I never really liked the color pink, and I still struggle with OCD and I joke that it’s like ADD only different acronyms but when the stress becomes high it’s truly debilitating.

Prayer is the only antidote and if I did have a girl, I fear I’d always be adjusting her pink ribbons. Or purple or whatever I would insist on her wearing, and I’m still thin. Too thin, my husband says, the one who saw me through my anorexic relapse. The one who prayed me through nights of insomnia, and days of only eating supper, the one who gave me the ultimatum on the side of the highway after I tried to drive us into traffic. It was him, or food, he said. He couldn’t do it anymore, and I chose him, and every day now, I choose him.

I have two boys of my own now, and I’m trying not to mess them up. I’m trying not to let my OCD or my dislike of cooking or my struggle with portion size affect them or their understanding of value. I’m trying to sit with them at mealtimes, and eat with them and place my hand lovingly on theirs and to remember that food is much simpler than it seems.

I’m 32, and I like a piece or two of dark chocolate just as much as the next person along with a glass of red wine (or two). But I catch myself looking in the mirror too long after I’ve had a shower, or sub-consciously feeling the bony parts of my arms.

I remind myself of my mum, in many ways, who’s re-teaching herself things like balance and moderation after eight years of brain cancer. I have to re-learn things too. I know I’m recovered in the same way that I’m being healed, in the same way that I’m saved even as I’m being perfected. And it’s all grace, they say, but I say it’s all God.

Because that’s what is growing inside of me now. God. All warm and dark and mysterious.

And I’m beginning to wear pink, because I’ve realized it brings out the blush in my cheeks. And I dream about her sometimes. A girl. With her chubby cheeks (yes, I said chubby, even though I still struggle with eating even though I just wrote a book on eating disorders) and her soft voice singing, as she toddles down the hall and her brothers laugh when they see her, laugh and dance with her to the music on the radio.

She’s wearing lots of ribbons. All kinds of colors. And they look like freedom.

***

I’m giving away a copy of my new book today, Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy, co-authored by Dr. Dena Cabrera, and foreword by supermodel Emme.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Giving birth produces life in more than one sense. It’s the baby powder, milky-breathed spirit found in the softest limbs you’ve ever felt, and it’s the respect a man feels for his wife as he watches her give up her body for another.

And it’s the deep-rooted soul satisfying feeling of knowing you were born for more than the mirror. That you were born to see the face of God in your child, and to know, you yourself are a miracle.

I want you to have this book! Tell me ONE thing that you love about yourself, and you’ll be entered into the draw!

Otherwise, you can order it through the book’s website, here: www.mominthemirrorbook.com.

Emily Wierenga is a mom to two beautiful boys, wife to a handsome math teacher, and author of Chasing Silhouettes: How to Help a Loved One Battling an Eating Disorder (www.chasingsilhouettes.com) and Mom in the Mirror: Body Image, Beauty and Life After Pregnancy (www.mominthemirrorbook.com). To learn more, please visit www.emilywierenga.com.

What We Did - Episode I

2013-05-13T23:16:00.000-04:00

Sleep - Eat - Sun - Eat - Sun - Eat - Sleep.

Repeat.

That's pretty much what we did for four straight days.

Thanks for reading!

Goodnight!

Nevermind. I'm not done yammering.
If you know one thing about me, it's that I'm highly gifted and exceptionally talented at dragging out the simple and mundane and exhausting all of you with my incessant jaw-flapping. Just be glad it's not the 60's and you're here at my house where I've already set up the slide show. You know I would be that girl.

Here's where I'd like to start: What is it about vacation? What is it about sitting around reading books in the sun? I kept thinking - couldn't I just do this at home? For free?

The answer is - Nope.

Day after day I lounged in my chair and marveled at the vast completeness of the white space in my mind. No errands. No doctor's appointments. No grim hour of doom (aka homework). No meals to cook, laundry to fold. No alarms. Heck, no emails! All I had to do was roll myself out of bed, yank on my swimming suit, and walk a few paces to the pool, where I parked my rear and stuck my nose in a book.

Sometimes I multi-tasked and ate an apple while I read.
It was altogether freeing.

Just go on a kidless vacation. I dare you.

And I highly recommend going with another couple. I don't know, it just works. But it's imperative - imperative! - that you have similar ideas about vacationing.

In our case: lazy/lazy. Boom.

(Although Timi did dare to run one morning and they both took a couple of real, bonafide "walks", so they're on probation. We had no choice. Just following the rules.)

The other benefit of going with friends is you don't have to ask the waitress to take a blurry photo of you and your honey. You can just ask Andy! This is Andy's trade-mark. Somehow he always ends up focusing on the gigantic bottle of rum instead of our faces.

Try #2 was better. I can't remember the precise configuration, but I like this shot. I look dainty and shorter than my husband, like normal wives.

Okay, this next montage is important for a few reasons.
#1: It highlights the exact moment that I fell dangerously in love with mocha almond fudge ice cream. (Timi got coffee instead, which is a double-dipped infraction if ever there was one.)
#2: The most hilarious conversation was happening just across the sidewalk from us.

It looks like we're talking about something really...interesting...and funny. In reality I kept saying, "I'm eavesdropping right now. Look natural." "I can't focus on what you're saying because that guy is talking about METH! Out loud! Keep talking. Look natural."

Right about now the guy-in-question was screaming into his phone, "She tries to act like she's so tough and like she can do so many push-ups and pull-ups. I said to her, 'You think you can do more push-ups than me????! Well, that's not fair because I weigh more than you. So duh! You wanna make it a real contest, you lay on my back while I do 20 push-ups then I'll lay on your back while YOU do 20 push-ups.' He he he!"

Then, within a fraction of a second, the conversation took a dangerous turn for the creepy and gross and we spent the rest of the trip mentally scrubbing our brains with Clorox.

The whole scene took place just outside Cuban Paradise, fyi. Apparently hand-rolled cigars are noteworthy. Who knew?

BREAKING NEWS: That is the man! See his knees and his dog leash? Doesn't he look harmless enough with his nondescript middle-aged calves and suspicious USPS-knock-off button-down? He's not! Not harmless! Also, he has no sensitivity for the public air waves. He bellowed his dirty laundry into his phone for all the world to hear. He gives flip-phoners a bad name, that one.

PS - I don't know why I'm making that look, except that Cory said I looked like I was throwing a gang sign with my cone and instinctively his comment threw me into this face, favored for facebook profile pics by many of the youngish urban girls we know and love. And yes, I know that gangs aren't funny.

But sometimes they are. Like when an almost 40-year-old mom thinks she has even the slightest clue about them in her maxi skirt with her mocha almond fudge.

But mostly - not funny. You're right.

To Do:
Research the relationship between cigar shops and large statues of Native American chiefs.

I only know this is a "thing" because of that one episode of Seinfeld where they Indian-give the Indian statue.

Okay, I still have 10 photos left to painstakingly detail and I'm only on day 1. I can't even handle the stress of my job right now! This always happens. I tell myself no one really cares about my vacation and that I should just choose my favorite 3-5 shots and be on my way. (Of course you're more astute than I and you know I'm immune to reason so you probably saw this coming.)

Stay tuned for parts II-VIII.

Until then, I'll leave you with one parting shot:

I'm sorry.
They begged to be commemorated. They terrified me.

Claw feet, my friends.

Claw.

Feet.

The Honor of Sharing Mother's Day with Birth Mamas

2013-05-11T20:47:00.001-04:00

It felt so good to slow all the way down today. Daddy worked at the annual neighborhood Help-A-House project and we played memory, read books, did a little crafting and unpacking. (But just a little.) I wore multiple layers and knee socks and watched in horror as my tan chipped off before my eyes in teeny, tiny icicles.

But who needs a tan with a heart this full?

We sat around the dinner table together eating our new favorite comfort food. (We stir-fried in fresh broccoli, sliced carrots, red cabbage and extra green onions. Also, we subbed veg oil for canola and red pepper flakes for the chili oil.) In honor of tomorrow, conversation turned to all the other mamas - the birth moms, the foster moms. As usual, it's fascinating to see how each of them processes things so differently.

**

Silas: Did my Korea Mommy used to boss me?

**

Silas (later): Then you came all the way to Korea to get me! To be my boss!

**

Me: Siley, what do you think your birth mommy looks like?
Silas: She looks Korea. Like Sunny. (Sunny is the owner of our fave Korean restaurant.)

**

Me: What do you love the best about Shosh?
Ruby: (grinning) That she's almost the same as me. We have almost the same curly hair.
Me: Do you think she loves you?
Ruby: Yes!
Me: You're right. Why does she love you so much?
Ruby: Because I'm her girl!
(She then launched into a lengthy tribute to the "silliness" of her birth mom's husband. It's just the way she rolls and I can't get enough of her random insights and short-circuit thought connections.)

**

Calvin: So I really have FOUR moms.
Me and Daddy: ???
Calvin: Well, you know how God says He is like our Mom and our Dad? So - four!

**
Every year since I've become a Mama, just when I think I can't possibly feel any more love for all our people, a bit more slips in, right about now.

I think of our birth moms all the time. I will them to see how well their boys are doing, how happy and smart they are. I'm grateful every minute that Ruby's doesn't have to wonder about those things. But this time of year is different. It's more. To me, this day is theirs. I don't know that they would see it the same way, but I find no alternative. They are a tender and powerful part of the stories of my children, and even of mine. They have much to teach me about obedience and trust. They're beautiful, and I don't need a picture to prove it.

This year, there's a new one wedged in to my heart in a whole different way. She's somewhere out there, in Chicago or who-knows-where. She brought our tallest son into the world nineteen years ago and I wish she could have stuck around for everything that happened next. I hope she'll be back. Like all the others, I hope she somehow knows he's well-loved today. I hope her heart isn't hurting tonight.

Each story is different and my questions could fill a palace, if I let them. But I don't ask because it simply does not matter. What we know for sure is that God made a way for these Littles. He took sorrow and tears and shaped them into something lovely and eternal. He breathed a living bloom into a place where there was desperation. He gave courage where many could never have imagined it possible. He did all of that, so I plead and believe that He'll finish this work, that He'll heal all of the hurts, every one.

We pray for them extra, tonight. We purposely wind conversation around to them because we know our kids won't ever forget, but we also want them to remember that we've always been right here, helping them hold on to the thread that connects their heart to ours, and to one more.

Let's Try That Again, With Feeling

2013-05-10T22:06:00.000-04:00

We had a vacation, man. We did all the regular vacationy stuff but you might be ~~appalled~~ surprised to hear that neither of us set foot in the ocean. We're weirdos, okay? We own it. We did walk on the beach a few times, and that has to be worth something. We also ate a lot. (Can that please be worth something, too?) (It can on vacation!)

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

It's almost ten peaem. I'm roasting crack broccoli because I need some green like the salsa needs its chip. There's a frozen pizza on deck - a rising crust Margherita - totally legit. We're home and hungry. We're also lucky, because there's a giant bowl of mangoes and a fridge stuffed to the gills. My mom is the exact type of rad that stocks the fridge and washes the sheets for me. She's also the kind of rad that buys large boxes of sugar cereal and two boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes for them. Yet somehow, in the midst of all the rogue sugar, Calvin said to me, "Grandma spoils us...but in a way that's pretty healthy."

(I'm on to you, Grams.)

I'm full of the feeling of the goodness of all that there is.
Is that specific enough? Vague enough? Does it acutely indicate that I'm still slightly trapped between my vacation-state-of-mind and my life-is-beauty-full rhythm?

I always feel this way on the heels of a get-away and I'm sorry to say, I always feel compelled to say it right here. Every ding dang time. Sorry about your luck. I probably could've just linked to this post and called it a night, but what fun would that be? My fingers have missed these keys. And you.

It's just that I love vacation. I love the full letting go of it all. I love that dinner appears like magic and ones I love are right there with me. I love the books and the mags, the movies and the fruity drinks. I love the sun on my legs and the sleeping in and the splotchy suntan.

But I love the thought of home even more. I love what waits for me right here. I love that they missed us more than they realized. (I love that they were too safe and having too much fun to notice.) I love my kitchen and my bed. I love the perspective that taking a break holds a mirror to. I love being reminded of how good I already have it.

Here's something I don't love: realizing days later that I put the wrong links in my last post. Yeesh. If nothing else, it's proof that I fell clean off the grid for 4.5 days. I have to confess, I sort of loved that, too.

But vacay's over, so let's fix it, because they really were good reads. (Still are, in fact.)

The World Outside my Window by Watering the Grass

Not What We're Used To by Mama's Minutia

A Different Kind of Person by Casey Leigh

I'll have more to say and plenty to show soon. For now?

I dine.

Watcha Gonna Do With It?

2013-05-08T20:12:00.000-04:00

Via Katygirl Designs

My today will be spent soaking up words on a page, sun from the Florida coast, and love from my man. I'm hoping for unexpected thrills and quiet mixed with a strong swig of rowdy. I plan to notice beauty for the grace that it is and sleep in late.

How 'bout you?

While you're thinking about it, have a peek at these fine reads:

You Matter by Simple Mom

The World Outside my Window by Watering the Grass

Not What We're Used To by Mama's Minutia

A Different Kind of Person by The Wiegands

Claiming the Victory :: My Rescue from False Doctrine

2013-05-05T22:12:00.000-04:00

My earliest years were wrapped up in a little village church, where everyone started as friends and became a family. It was a body of humble people - dairy farmers, groundskeepers, receptionists, carpenters, housewives. They perfected the carry-in lunch and someone always had extra when we forgot our own table service. The garish carpet is still sketched on the floorboards of my memory and I knew those halls like the flip-side of my eternity.

I sat in the pew - middle section - sometimes sucking on the one in front of me. I can still taste the tang of the varnish. All I really knew was that Jesus loved me. He loved me because they kept on telling me He did, and I trusted them, because they popped corn in the cooker well past dark on summer evenings and laughed with my parents until the whole room shook. They were my kin, and I believed them.

One day, when some might say I was much too young to understand, I walked up front at the end of the service and I asked Jesus to live in me. I bawled my eyes out, not because I was overcome by a certain force or unseen magnitude, but because I was embarrassed in front of all those people. I didn't want them looking at me. I had a sneaking suspicion they would all want to hug me when service was over, and all I could think about was lunch and a long stretch of afternoon with my family.

Of course they hugged me.

Before long I had my gray Awana shirt and I made it my mission to memorize the most verses so I could win the trophy. I honed my sword-drill skills. I stuffed my pockets to the gills for the pocket scavenger hunt. I won a lot of the churchy contests and none of the sporty ones and life kept moving, kept on turning. The dark lurch of "doing" was creeping in, but not all had been lost, life was still right as far as I knew, and Jesus sure did love me.

Nothing ever stays as good as we think it should and before long, lots of adults got in the way, disturbing the tenuous balance of my universe, pitching me straight out of my safety net. My family left that church.

In my mind, that's where the trouble started.

It's been a long road between ages 8 and 37. My faith charts well outside the plot of a steady incline. It's marked with pitches and dips, and maybe that's unavoidable. Maybe almost everyone would say the same.

All I know is somewhere along the way, people stopped reminding me that Jesus loved me. I grew in years and it became more about what I should do than what had been done for me. I had the power to make Jesus sad, to incite God's wrath, to hurl a mountain into the ocean, or to prove my infant faith to everyone and doubt for one second - doubt anything, for any length of time. I could insist that I deserved great wealth, I could say one million times that he should be healed - that he was healed already. I could say it fast enough that my words might bleed into a truer version of righteousness, I could scream it out so everyone could see what I had. I could ignore that itch in my soul, the one that told me captivity filled those folding chairs and kept them filled, the one that said I should trust almost no one in the room, save my faithful parents and a handful of others.

I was taught via a silent, churchy osmosis that sin was to be extinguished by the sheer force of my faith and that if perhaps (as many suspected) my faith was as puny as it looked, I should at the very least take pains to bury it, hide it, do something with it, because it didn't belong at church. The only place sin had under that strange, puffy ceiling was at the front-end of a testimony that ended in victory. They only spoke of sin in the past tense, and sometimes they called it demon possession, just to make the stakes even graver. Meanwhile, sin trolled around us, passed the plate, shook our hands, drove us home.

I wonder if things could have been different if we had been allowed to see the quieter work of a God who transforms a life over time, by repeated exposure to the boldness of His love amid personal failure, by the simplicity and power of His word. Maybe if the truth had been allowed a folding chair of its own, a little girl wouldn't have walked into adolescence and adulthood with a cynic's view of Christianity and a penchant for disproving her own brokenness.

I can't bend time, but I have a hunch that it would have served me well to learn by repetition not that God wanted me to be financially prosperous, but that He wanted me low, humble, needing much, clinging always and only to Him for survival.

I don't believe the church that skewed my worth and honed my discernment deserves any measure of my bitterness or judgment, though it's sometimes difficult to feel otherwise. I know the church where I met Jesus as a child suffered many of the same stains as the "new" church. I simply had naivete on my side in the beginning. I think they were all humans, wounded and hurting, afflicted by the exact disease that feeds my ugliness. But rather than confronting the poison with honesty and integrity, they showed every little pair of eyes that it wasn't a top priority and they hinged our standing in the church community on our ability wear our mask with optimal, unshakable skill.

Suffice it to say, I'm done with all that. I'm so freaking done. I was done for years, incrementally, in doses just big enough to make it down. And then, I was done altogether. I was done in the moment of my personal decimation and done again, every day since. I was done when I knew I was forgiven in spite of my undeservedness. I was done when I sat for the first time in a new Sunday school class, ten years ago, and watched as the guy across the table laid bare his faults to the shock and surprise of no one. I wanted more of that.

The company we keep has changed in recent years but the souls are the same and I know for sure that they don't need me to wop them over the head (literally or otherwise) and scream that they need Jesus. They need to be reminded of his wild love for them. They don't need to hear that God saved me years ago and now I'm almost perfect, never missing a step, hurling every mountain I see into the ocean, waiting and waiting for an inevitable sum of cash to drop from the sky to my feet. They need to see the slow, transforming power of Christ in me, the work he does every minute of every day, while I do things like whine and rebel and repent. They need to watch me not get every little thing I want. They need to watch me suffer, and they need to know that any grace I manage to exhibit is nothing that I manufacture on my own.

The church that formed me is the church that snatched me up in adulthood and has now captured me again. The names, the towns, the shade of the carpeting, all different. But the message is unanimous and clear: Jesus loves me. He saved me because He knew I needed saving. He knows I'm destined for failure outside of Him, but spotless in His sight. I am a mess and so are the rest of His loves, but there's no end to his mercy. He screams and cheers and street-fights for me and He won't ever stop. He needs me to go to His people and He needs me to not care at all what it might cost. Because to live in Him is gain. It's all there is. It's purity and truth. It is holiness.

Thread

2013-05-04T21:32:00.002-04:00

"Settle in, right where you are, refusing to wish for something different." - Emily P. Freeman, Chatting at the Sky

On most Saturday mornings, Cory and I let the Wild Things fend for themselves for an hour or so while we lay in bed pretending that we're allowed to sleep in. There are usually two or three tattling intruders, several high-pitched screams, and the whole jig typically ends in a kitchen disaster along the lines of spilled Cheerios or exploding peanut butter toast. But those 70-odd minutes are still a rare and precious treasure, and it's worth it. Ish.

Today, we rolled out of bed, slapped on some deodorant and brushed our teeth, then headed 2 blocks down the street to our church for Neighborhood Clean-Up Day.

My "team" consisted of Cory, myself, Ruby, Silas, and our neighbor girl Monica (Ruby sometimes accidentally thinks her name is Harmonica). If you know anything about any of the three youngest team members, you know the deck was stacked against us.

But we did our thang.

We filled two giant trash bags and I repressed the heavyweight urge to tip-toe across the floorboards of several porches to "tidy up". For two hours we walked in the sun while Monica told us things that were true, things that were untrue, and laughed her most neurotic laugh.

For two hours I wandered streets with the sun on my cheeks, thankful again that this is where I found my home, surprised for the thousandth time that I love it so much.

We might be different than some of our neighbors, and we might be exactly the same as others, but there's a thread of solidarity stitched between each one of us for the simple reason that this is the place we have chosen. We chose it decades ago or just last month. We chose it second-hand, by default. We chose it on purpose. One way or another, each of us chose. The guy covered in tats with the porch covered in garbage, the lady who painstakingly hand-wired vines of silk flowers to every limb of every tree, the gangly girl just meeting herself for the first time at the age of 36 all chose this.

So the language "barrier" doesn't even reach our knee caps and there's no shade of flesh, no brand of shoe, no brick or timber to separate us. We walk the same crumbling sidewalks and send our children off to the same little school. We press seeds into the same earth and wait for the wild flash of hope to find us out here, in the air and sun, where we live.