Cupcakes, Sprinkles, and other Happy Things

Don't Look Dummy!

2009-11-02T17:35:00.002-06:00

I accidentally saw a decapitated dear on the side of the highway today.

It was awful.

I’m not an animal lover, so it wasn’t the kind of awful that made me think, “Oh poor creature of earth, he had such a promising life ahead of him in the beautiful Arkansas forest. He probably had a name and a family. Poor little dear.”

But I’m not a blood and gore girl either. So the thought was more like, “Oh my gosh. Why did you just do that? Why did you look dummy? Why did you look???”

As I drove along I-40 to Nashville my mind kept regurgitating the image of the stomach churning, severed dear head that my delicate eyes were exposed to; and I realized how typical this experience was of life.

It’s just that once you’ve seen something, if you are mostly human that is, a little bit of whatever you saw seeps into you. And then it’s there. And then you see it. And whether you respond to it or not is up to you and your own conscience, but no matter what you do in response, the image is still there… decapitated and staring at you and all.

And usually, after your eyes have caught a glimpse of an unkindly visage, you scream to yourself, seconds too late “Don’t look dummy.”

Only to hear the dummy respond, “Too late.”

Knock, Knock

Last night I watched John Lennon’s documentary Imagine. I was fascinated at his interaction with people who were affected by his music. They would show up at his door. His front door. Can you imagine what the Vietnam War drug in? Young, lost, confused, emotional, passionate, starving for meaning little hippies. They would show up like stray dogs at Lennon’s doorstep seeking meaning and purpose and he would answer the door.

He would answer the door. Can you imagine? He took their questions seriously; he treated these vagabonds as human beings. He even fed them on occasion and welcomed them into his home.

At one point John says that the people affected by his music were somewhat his responsibility, his burden.

And the whole time I’m sitting there screaming, “Don’t look dummy. Don’t look out your window. For the love Beatle man, turn around, close your eyes, don’t do it!”

I suppose that is where I find myself lately. Eyes wide open with a little voice that screams seconds too late, “Don’t look dummy.”

Buried in the Sand

You can’t very well walk around with your eyes closed. Though many try. I meet a lot of religious people around the country who are convinced that trying to raise their kids with a blindfold and earplugs and a chastity belt and ankle cuffs and no access to the real world will protect them from the pitfalls of human nature and keep them a safe distance from all things unholy. The general result of this protectionism tactic is students who have no clue what it’s like to be human in this great big world. They know only one thing, one way, and they cannot relate to anyone else. These are the kids who would have been shocked had they taken a field trip with Jesus. It would have been the most inappropriate field trip of their lives; visiting prostitutes and wedding parties that were overflowing with wine and all.

But honestly sometimes it’s much easier to not look, isn’t it? When I look at everything I suddenly seem so very small. The questions seem so very big. The answers seem so very evasive. And the opinions weighing in seem too plentiful to count. And I find myself asking, is it easier to face the giants of intellect, science, history, culture, and ethics or is it easier to stick my head in the sand, quote a scripture verse, and refuse to delve into anything beyond the pages of my Bible?

Well, it is quite an easy exercise to use my faith as an excuse for closing my eyes to everything else that exists in the world. But the problem is, Jesus didn’t seem to close his eyes. He was sort of out there in the mix of things calling them for what they were: light or dark. And I can almost envision Him walking by a beach full of religious people with their heads buried in the sand, like ostrich do, and Jesus plucking them out (perhaps laughing a bit as the sun stings their eyes), so that they can actually see and interact and get up close and personal with the real world.

But you can’t very well walk around with your eyeballs taped wide open either.

There is a point where so many books, so many authors, theories, movements, agendas, political rants, and esoteric exercises can dilute one’s normal sensibilities. All of a sudden our judgment is gone, lost in the mire of mere human voices and abstract theories that are meaningless. Our eyes can be so opened, consuming so much, that the spiritual is lost on a world that perpetually shoves more and more words into our already saturated brains. What then can a word mean, when it is simply one word among millions? What then can an image mean, when it is simply one image among millions? What then can Jesus mean, when He is simply one among many? There has to be some limit, some boundary that protects us from our own demise.

Open for Business?

It’s just that I am often torn about where to fall. So much of me wants to say of this world, “Don’t look dummy,” because this world hurts and I can get lost in it. But my spirit is curious, my heart prone to wonder, my mind made inquisitively, and my Lord says, “Seek, and you will find.

Seek. I like this word except that if you say it too many times it starts sounding weird. Like leek. Or Sheik. And then I get distracted.

In order to seek, our eyes must be open.

When we seek, we open ourselves to all kinds of things. We might see bad stuff; like the dead decapitated dear. We might see people (sometimes annoying, time-consuming, draining, needy people) and realize they are our responsibility, like John Lennon did with his fans. We might see gaps in our faith, holes in our religious institutions, and rough spots in our stagnant theology that need to be sloughed off.

But Jesus says seek and you will find.

So I have to believe that when my eyes are open and exposed to the ugly, there is a good chance I will find something beautiful as well. I might just find myself saying, “Don’t look away, don’t forget this moment.”

We might be surprised that when we open our eyes to the world around us, our God is big enough to answer any questions, any holes, or any gaps we might find. We might be surprised to see God in the midst of this big ole dirty world. In places we never thought we’d see Him. We might be surprised that upon opening our eyes, yes, we see an ugly reality, but it almost always runs parallel with some form of redemption. And we can actually see redemption.

Like the child who is afraid there is a boogieman in the closet and holds her hands tightly over her eyes, we might be surprised to find that when we peel back a finger or two and anxiously look around… we catch a glimpse of truth and beauty. Not a boogie man. Not road kill. Not pervasive cultural monsters. But something that screams or whispers or hints of goodness. And goodness comes from its creator.

So at least for today… I want my eyes to be open. To everyone. To everything.

The Snots

2009-10-14T22:49:00.003-05:00

Annie's first trip to Chicago...

Annie has the snots.

She will be six months old tomorrow and this is the first time she’s ever had anything rattling around in her head, so I think that is a good sign.

Considering I woke her up at 3:50 a.m. on Saturday (after an 11:00 p.m. bedtime) and had her at the airport by 5:00 a.m. and we’ve been going non-stop ever since then, I think she is holding up rather splendidly.

In 48 hours she went from Missouri to Kansas City, stayed briefly in Dallas, straight on to Mississippi, and finally ended up In Chicago, where…

We promptly put her, with the snots and all, into a loaded train so that we could go into the city. Is this bad parenting? Don’t answer, please.

She loved it. Every tunnel made her eyes grow ten times bigger than her actual eyeball sockets and she followed every single car on the highway with her little head bobbing back and forth. I figured she would throw up at some point or get dizzy and stop, but this never happened. She just smiled. I on the other hand… I felt like I had been blindfolded and spun around 10 times trying to keep up with her little bobbing head.

I don’t want to put too much pressure on her and create a perfectionist who feels like she is always slaving away only to realize that she is lacking (no, no, I’d much rather have a mediocre kid). But, she is perfect.

You can’t really take credit for a perfect baby. Just like you can’t take credit for pretty eyes or those amazing inherited family heirlooms known as thunder thighs or cleft chins or big ears. You don’t pick those things; they pick you.

So, take heart moms and dads of the world. From a mother who is royally failing by every book’s standard (my kid rubbed her hand on the subway seat rest and stuck it in her mouth before I could stop her and she has really only ever bathed in hotel bathrooms and she took her 40^th flight without a face mask this weekend and sometimes I give her formula bottles that are more than an hour old, and she has had more than 30 different sitters, and sometimes I forget to change her diaper…etc, etc.) you can’t really mess your kids up. Not in the beginning anyways. They either come out happy and perfect; cranky and high maintenance; quiet and uninterested, or some other mixture in between.

That my child is still thriving is a miracle. That she can stay in her stroller for three hours of shopping and eating, with a diaper change in a dressing room, followed by a 45 minute train ride in 35 degree temperatures and never shed one tear… but rather smile, laugh, and watch the world fly by her with wide-eye wonder is a testament to the strength of babies and seriously debunks the theories of best-selling baby experts.

Rather than live in guilt, I have decided to embrace my insane life and bring her with me for the ride. My pastor Jackie always says, “Jenny, what do you think they did with babies on the prairie or in the rice fields or wherever else women had to work manually in history?” Of course the answer is they strapped their babies on their bodies and the baby’s schedule was the mom’s schedule, not vice versa. And while I do not wish to live the same life as a rice patty picker or prairie woman, I am learning to value the sentiment that life doesn’t end with a baby, it simply becomes a little more complicated as you bring them with you into your world.

It’s a perpetual “bring your baby to work” day in this family and I kind of like it.

So…

You know how sometimes you forget to call someone back? Or you forget to write a thank you card? Or you feel some sort of guilt over something you should have done for someone else? And then, the more time that passes, the more guilty you feel, and the pressure weighs down on you about the call that you need to place. And then you think… after all this time??? I better have something incredibly kind or brilliant or witty or endearing or forgiving to say.

That’s how I’ve been feeling about my blog. After all this time and all I have for you is Annie has the snots...

Sure, I am out on the road and have not had many opportunities to write… but that is no excuse. I fell off the face of the earth. And the further I fell, the harder it was to crawl back out of the black hole of non-blogistence. What would I say? Why did I even write in the first place? Do I even have anything worth throwing out to the world? The more time that passed, the more I began relishing in the laziness of not having to think or speak or write… it was a vicious cycle.

But here I am missing you guys and missing the writing life and so I write to you from a cold Illinois evening to say hello and sorry for the almost three week break.

Nothing brilliant or deep or terribly funny… just a hello from your traveling friend.

Hello.

(and yes, I will get an updated amount for Katie posted asap... thank you, thank you, thank you to those of you who have joined me in supporting our sweet friend and her ministry)

Katie

2009-09-27T20:17:00.005-05:00

One Happy Family! Katie and her girls. God's girls.

Katie has a new daughter! Her 14th baby girl, Patricia. Welcome to the family little squirrel, you are so cute!

Now let's raise this family some money!!!

Donate Online

Amazima Ministries International
1694 Autumn Place
Brentwood, TN
37027

Now is the time friends!

I gotta say, part of me wants to be spiritual in this blog, but the other part is just screaming... "You Christians talk and pray and think and pray and talk so stinking much...aggghhhh... stop talking and just do something already."

So if that's all you needed to hear, then there's the address! Send a check to Amazima Ministries International or donate online right now. And while you're at it, invite your friends and family to do the same.

Now, for the rest of us who tend to talk and pray and think and do all that stuff (ad nasuem and often to the point that we miss the moments because we are complicating things too much), here's what I am thinking tonight:

This week we will flood the office and the online paypal account of Amazima Ministries with our money; our sacrifices. Lord, let it be a true sacrifice.

I could give a pep talk; but a picture speaks a thousand words doesn't it? I could try to encourage you; but the Holy Spirit doesn't need me. I am quite sure He already has the attention of your heart. I could try and guilt you into giving; but there is no guilt or shame in these little girl's faces. They now live in the economy of love and we are simply privileged to join alongside of them in this economy. Where there is love, there is no room for manipulation, guilt, or shame. I could give you statistics about orphans, AIDS, Africa, poverty, malnutrition, and the role of the Christian, as described in the Bible, to meet these challenges head on. I could quote a few more lines from Katie's blog or tell you about my own experience living with orphans in Romania and tell you how desperately these children need for us to care.

There are a lot of things I could use this space for tonight, but I won't. I don't need to.

I will simply tell you that I am grateful for each one of you and the way you have prayed about, wrestled with, and dug deep in your heart to figure out how you can be a part of Katie's journey. I truly believe that by walking alongside Katie, we are walking alongside God himself. By joining Katie we are joining in the journey of these 14 beautiful girls, their lives, their future, and their legacy on this earth. By joining Katie we are joining in the care of an entire village worth of children and adults. We are empowering women, helping to educate this young generation of children, feeding the poor, caring for the orphans and being faithful to follow the nudging of the Holy Spirit.

We have seen a small glimpse of where God is working and now we are saying, "Yes, I want to join you. Use me. Send me. I will go. I will give. I will sacrifice. I will obey. I will joyfully follow you to this unknown place so that your children, your beloved children, will be cared for. Yes, Lord... Here am I, send me."

Whether you are in California, Maine, Brazil, England, Netherlands, Texas or somewhere in between... by joining Katie, you join a group of believers who are choosing to say, "Yes, Lord... Here am I, send me." It might be $5. It might be $50. $500. $5,000. Only you know that part. But by doing SOMETHING, today you join in living out the gospel that Jesus modeled here on earth. I trust it will not be the last time you act, the last time you join God in his work, or the only thing you will sacrifice. I know you have given before, you are committed to tithing to your church, your favorite charity, or some other cause... I know Katie was probably not a part of your plan, not a part of your budget... she wasn't apart of mine either.

But there she is. 14 kids and about 1200 hundred on the weekends. And they call her Auntie Katie. And she touches each one of them. And she nurses them back to health, drags them to school :) worships the same God with them, helps the ladies in the village learn a job skill, heals the sick (usually with a basic drop of Tylenol and a bite of chicken), cares for the orphans, and loves on the least of these. How can I not act?

I am praying tonight for an outpouring! That we would raise $6,000 and then some. I am praying for $10,000. I am praying that in a few weeks there would be a piece of land in Uganda sitting there, fully owned, waiting for a clinic to be built upon it. That there will be so much money flowing in that the clinic will be built, and chickens will be running wild around that place and it will be flowing with water and yummy, yummy protein!!!

I am praying our hearts will be moved. I am praying for generosity. Sacrificial living. Sacrificial giving. I am excited. I probably won't be able to sleep tonight. I cannot wait. Happy giving my friends!

More Details Please?

Your gift is tax deductible. Amazima is a 501 (c) (3) non profit and directly benefits Katie. The non-profit organization, Amazima, was built in response to the work that Katie is doing in Uganda.

If you are writing a check include "land" in the subject line so they will know exactly where you intend for it to go. It can be mailed to the address above.

If you are donating online, click on the link above. It will take you directly to a secure, pay-pal account set-up specifically for donations going to buy the piece of land.

If you arranged to give your money to me, I will be mailing it in a lump sum!

To the best of my knowledge, if you are wishing to contribute from somewhere outside of the United States, PayPal will gladly accept your credit/debit card.

In order to protect people's privacy, I am not collecting money personally, it is going straight to Katie's people... so, if you want to know how much we all collectively raised, then please leave a number in the comment field and I will try to come up with the best estimate possible! Even if you have already pledged a certain amount, please tell me again, officially! You can post it anonymously on the comment section.

Calamities

2009-09-25T21:36:00.004-05:00

I have shingles.

Did you know that you could be 29 years old and get the shingles? Jeff diagnosed me. No offense to the doctors of the world, but with WebMD, we are not only musicians, we are highly skilled practitioners of medicine as well. My aunt is going to kill me for saying that.

Anyways, apparently shingles happen in older people, people with weakened immune systems, or people under "extreme duress." I think that last word is Latin for really stressed out.

So I got the classic shingles rash on my lower back. Then my ribs started aching. Then it hurt to put on my clothes. Then the rash moved to my stomach but stayed on the left hand side of my body. Then it felt like I had been stampeded by longhorn and wolves (wolves are fast so I imagine they hurt real bad once they run over you that fast). And now it just feels like I have the flu, the kind of flu where it hurts to put your clothes on flu. With my luck... probably swine flu.

If you keep up with the band you know that we have had, yet another, incredible streak of bad luck. The guys hit a huge oak tree that had fallen into the middle of a windy, twisty, 2-lane country road. It was midnight, after a show, and it was raining. When I saw the pictures and they showed me what part of the road it happened on, I felt sick. They were in two cars. The van, and the little car behind them. If the little car would have gone first, they would have been really, really hurt. Maybe worse. It was that bad.

So, a week before we start a tour with Sanctus Real the van is totaled and we have no way to make it to our 17 shows. Right now the bill for the van is at about $6,000 which insurance will cover most of; but the bill for renting another van is about $3,000. Our fans, friends, and family are helping raise money on the Addison Road website to get us back out on the road and continue doing our ministry and music. You can go to our website if you want to help out.

And I...

I am just laughing. I mean, what else can you do?

The weekend before our last big tour with Mercy Me and Jeremy Camp, the entire van and trailer were stolen! This time around they are totaled! I have shingles. Ryan blew his back out and has not been able to really walk all week. We have both been at doctors, limpin' around like we got no teeth and have lost our hearing. There is a call from a collection agency on Monday because somehow I missed one of Annie's hospital bills, that I swear I have never seen, and now we owe some really mean people in Ohio lots of money we didn't know about and now our credit will probably never recover and now we will have to live in a Winnebago down by the river...

I also missed an interview this past week. Not once. Not twice. But three times in a row with the same couple and I am pretty sure I have been officially blackballed in the state of New York. I'm sorry. That one maybe makes me feel a little more awful than the other things. To stand people up... on accident... but still, ugh, I hate being irresponsible.

And in the midst of all of this, all I can do is laugh. And then cry. And then cuss. And then lay in bed and eat ice cream. And then start the cycle all over again. I have said it previously, but it has just been a long, long month. I can usually take punches pretty well; but sometimes the other guy has to let you up for air before he continues.

So...

I did what I had to do. I called a counselor in town that only sees christian artists and their families and said, "I need help." They saw me right away. I asked my friends and church back home for prayer. Intense, "God, please help George Bailey," prayer. I went to the doctor for an official shingles diagnosis and got the medicine. And I made myself stop. One morning I just skipped a writing session and went and sat down with me, myself, and God and just got still. I decided to cancel writing sessions for the rest of the week. I took a nap or two. I held Annie more than usual. And I simply decided... I will value myself enough to take care of myself. If I am so stressed about money and the curve balls life is throwing us that I have the freakin shingles... there is a problem.

My life is too precious for such a waste of toxic energy.

So, in an effort to de-stress, to let go, to welcome in joy, to trust, I mean really TRUST that the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want... I am counting the quite small, beautiful moments tonight that shine bigger and scream louder than that other garbage.

*I had the most fun radio interview yesterday with Wally at Way FM Nashville; he makes me laugh. I love good DJ's. And there are a lot of them out there.

*The leaves are turning colors and people in Franklin, Tennessee have big pumpkins out everywhere. I love pumpkins.

*The people in Las Vegas, Nevada last weekend were amazing. Kind, hard working, and genuinely sincere. We met two great sisters, Natalee and Kimberly, who came to our hotel on Sunday to watch Annie for a few hours so we could go swimming. I love swimming. And I love good babysitters.

*My pastor and his wife are taking Ryan and I to see the Dallas Cowboys on Monday. Enough said. I love Monday Night football.

*Annie has learned how to roll off of her little mattress on the ground this week. She ends up in the bathroom or hallway before I find her and she looks like a little squirmy, dying cockroach. She cries like a dying cat and when I go and find her and tell her I am there, her eyes pop open. And she has the biggest, most beautiful grin on her face. Even at 3:00 a.m. when she has rolled out of her little room and down the hall... I swear she is an angel. I love that kid.

*Someone stuck up for me this week, which meant I didn't have to. Or at least didn't want to as badly. It always feels good to know someone loves you enough to say, "Hey, back off, nobody asked your opinion."

*In less than 24 hours people from all over the country and even Canada have almost sent the band enough money to help us rent a van so we can make it on tour next week. Some people send $5... and this means a lot to me. It means they have little, but they are still doing something, and to me, that is beautiful. I don't care how little it is; when God lays something on our hearts, whether it is Katie or your next door neighbor or the dude on the street corner... something is better than nothing. I believe God honors that. I love people who do something.

* I am completely in love with the band Need to Breathe. Their CD and their live show make me happy to be an artist.

The new Donald Miller book is out; it is getting so close to all the fun things fall; I am 28 1/2 years old and it is almost my birthday; an amazing girl who I have not even thanked yet wanted to do something sweet for me and is sending me to a spa to get my hair done by a real person (yay, yay, yay!!!! I CANNOT wait); Annie is going to spend the night with her grandparents this week so Ryan and I can have a break; in three nights I will be in my bed for the first time in a month; tons of people are raising money for sweet Katie and the orphans and malnourished children in her Ugandan village; God has given me humor, health, and renewal, sweet, desperate renewal; my parents are planning a big family trip to see my sister in Hawaii over Christmas; I am about to introduce my baby girl to my Mamaw and Grandparents and they will see with their own eyes their beautiful legacy and I will be able to tell them how grateful I am for the family they brought into this world... Cupcakes, Sprinkles, and Other Happy Things; my friends, good things abound every where.

Life is good. Well, not really. Really, life is not good. It is so hard right now. And I have cried every tear under the sun. But, thank you God that you make all things new. I run, yet I do not grow weary. Well, at least not weary enough to simply kill over and die.

I walk through the waters and rivers, but I do not drown. I get that water up my nose and it burns like I laughed to0 hard and sucked diet coke up my schnauzer; but I don't drown.

I go through the fire, but then, in the flames I look and see that there is someone else in the flames with me. And neither of us are burned or consumed.

For you, my gracious savior are with me. You are the Holy one. You know me. You call me by name. You have given things and sacrificed greatly so that, I, your child, may bring you and you alone glory in the midst of my suffering. So that you may be praised... you make streams in the desert and you make a way in the wasteland. Even if the stream is a pretty fall pumpkin or a little baby that inches herself around the house in her sleep like a dying cockroach. You bring beauty from my ashes and introduce joy into my suffering. You put a smile on my face when despair is fighting to win my attention. You put perspective in my heart when I am feeling overwhelmed. My own paraphrase of Isaiah 43.

And you faithfully, oh so faithfully, send people into my life that speak your words of hope over me at just the right moment (that moment is usually about two minutes before I sit all the guys down to tell them I am quitting to be a real mom, English teacher, and perhaps cheer leading coach who has her nights and weekends free. It is usually one moment before I say to God, "Thanks but no thanks. You got the wrong girl. And I got the wrong God. This sucks. I'm out." And it is usually a few moments after another blow...or before another blow... or during another blow... it is constant) He finds me and reminds me of His Holiness at just the right moment. He reminds me that He is neither dead nor fictional; He is the very breath that keeps me going and gives me reason to exist.

Your love is all consuming when the world seeks to consume me.

So tonight, I am grateful for simple, little, silk threads of hope and light that dangle in front of my eyes and whisper in my ears as I climb a mountain and trudge a valley that I have never been in before...

Oh but HE HAS. He has met me here. And he will meet you where you are too. In fact, I promise he has gone before you, made a way, and waits to welcome you upon arrival.

Maybe with a lei. That's what he would do in Hawaii.

All in a Days Work

2009-09-22T01:21:00.002-05:00

It is 11:52 p.m. Nashville time and I just wrote an amazing worship song with Phil Whickam.

Let me back up…

I woke up at 4:19 a.m. this morning in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Annie was ready to eat and it didn’t much matter because the alarm was set for 4:30 a.m. anyways. I fed her and fell back asleep for seven minutes. Seven minutes of deep, intense sleep. This made the next round of wake ups miserable. I felt sick to my stomach. I hated the world.

We got out the door and to the airport in record time.

As I pulled out my laptop to go through security I realized… wait… there is no laptop.

I can’t help that my laptop is smarter than me. It was still asleep. On the desk. In the hotel. Lucky dog getting to sleep in like that. It is flying to Nashville tomorrow. At least I hope. I was too cheap to pay the extra ten dollars to have it insured… so; I hope it flying to Nashville tomorrow.

Back to the airport. Can we just take a moment to talk about the Las Vegas airport?

I’d rather hitchhike to Vegas naked and barefoot, walking over cactus plants and hopping a ride in a horse trailer or paddy wagon than go into that place again. It is a zoo. A loud, clangy, gaudy, cheap-o cacophony of advertisements, loud music, really amazing trashy outfits lining lots of no-name-stores, cigarette smoke, and mean security guards. It is a nightmare for babies who are stimulated easily. Ok, it was a nightmare for me. It was like being in one of those creepy fun houses where the mirrors make you look extra short and extra fat, the strobe lights flash in red and purple, the floor shuffles under your feet and the only way out is to go through a series of mazes, kiss a clown, and find a candy-cane slide that eventually dumps you out into a pit full of colored balls.

There is nothing fun about using seven tickets on that.

The Las Vegas airport is a final beacon of hope for the down and out who have whittled their money away on slot machines that make no logical sense (because they just sit there and flash pineapples and grapes and number 7’s and dollar signs and three bars and then two bars and then no bars and then the machine just stops after about ten seconds and says, “Game over. I took your money you moron.” And then I feel guilty for wasting three dollars.). I hate those machines. And the airport is full of them. That’s just my first qualm.

On Monday mornings, I would venture to say, the Las Vegas airport has more hung over people than any other place in the world.

People are straight up looking like death. Some of them tripping on themselves. Some with eyes glazed over. Some of them just stink like dingy cigarettes, swimming pool chlorine, and casino funk. Most people look angry. Cause let’s be honest… most people don’t win a darn thing. And most people are like little time bombs waiting for the next TSA agent to make them explode.

“I WILL not take off my shoes, I already sold my shoes to the devil this weekend. I have no shoes to give you.”

And Monday morning, everyone is going back to work. The place is packed with hung-over, broke, exhausted people going back to the real world.

I only thought Orlando was bad. All those poor kids having Mickey Mouse withdrawals and parents licking their $1,000 theme-park wounds. And then you add to it all the grandparents who tag along so they can give mom and dad a break but really just end up slowing down the whole joint cause their knee caps are flaring up and that rain just messes with their hair and they can’t eat breakfast for a reasonable price so they just aren’t eating at all (FDR would have never let prices inflate like that). Orlando is a doozy of an airport if you are not fully sucked into all things Disney, because then it just feels like a bunch of deranged family units on the brink of self-implosion. You have to be coming to or from Disney to have sympathy for all the crazy kin running around that airport.

But Vegas makes Orlando look like a Buddhist monastery.

And after all of that…

I am glad to be home in Nashville.

We are living in our manager’s downstairs home. He and his wife built their house with other people in mind; they are the most generous people I have ever known with their belongings. The downstairs house is for artists, family, or really anyone who needs a place to stay. We have our own kitchen, washer and dryer, master bedrooms, bathrooms, and closets. It feels like my house. I have a playroom set up for Annie; I am completely unpacked into the dresser drawers; and I even have my own shelf in the fridge. Pretty amazing actually. I’ve been here before when there were 17 people staying throughout the house. Most of the time Scott and Stacey don’t even know when people will pop over to use the pool, basketball court, the porch swings for meditation, the inside gym, or the fire pit for smores. It is just known throughout the community that whoever wants to be here can be here. It truly is community living.

And most of the time you will find one or two or three of his artist or band’s living downstairs or throughout the house.

The next few days we are living here alongside of Phil Whickam.

We all went to dinner tonight and then went our separate ways. I fed Annie and got her to bed. I was winding down myself. 4:19 a.m. was creeping up on me and I was on my last wind. Putting away laundry and then calling it quits.

And that’s when Brickell came down (Imagine a big, grizzly bear of a man. About 6’3? 6’5? I don’t know. A big, big man with a low, intimidating voice. Who also, by the way, gives the best hugs at the most perfect moments) and said, “Come on.”

Not a lot of room to say no. And you don’t really say no to him if you don’t have to.

So Ryan Gregg and I followed him upstairs and Brickell said, “Y’all want to write a song or what?”

And we did.

Here’s how song writing went down with Addison Road and Phil Whickam…

Phil: What do you want to write about?

Me: I want to write an amazing worship song so I don’t have to steal yours all the time.

Phil: Ohhhh, go on, go on. Okay. What is the theme?

Me: Well, I’ve been thinking about this scripture a lot.

Phil: Read it to me.

Me: I read it to him.

Phil: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that passage.

Me: Can we write it this way? Glimpses of stories and people from the Bible, but without being cheesy or sounding like an excerpt from the Old Testament? But still saying that God was who he was back then and still IS now. I’ve always really, really wanted to do that. But I don’t really know how to. You know, to like incorporate the history of our faith into a song?

Phil: Yeah, that’s hard, but we should do it. Why not? Lets do it. What about…

you were there when…

He starts to strum and a beautiful, perfect melody just flows out. We start spouting out story after story from the Old Testament. The lines are flowing in abundance. And somehow, here we are at 11:30 p.m. capturing the stories of the Bible in a poetic snapshot that, by the chorus, makes us want to sing our guts out in worship.

And we do.

Phil takes the harmony. I take the melody. And this worship song just sort of happens. And we are singing loud, getting goose bumps because it is so moving, and singing out even louder when we hit the bridge. This song takes on a life of its own. We are merely holding on and following it. And I am in awe. These are the moments that make a year worth of song writing worth it. Because eventually, you will have these moments. The perfect song will come.

This song will be on the album now. In a few months, you will hear it. It wasn’t supposed to happen. I was supposed to be in bed. I didn’t even have a computer to type words into. I just had an old school notebook. A blue pen. Two very tired little eyeballs… and then… out of nowhere, the inspiration, the substance, a guy sitting across the room that can write a melody and sing a song with a voice that can hypnotize an angel, and enough energy and excitement to carry me through a marathon. And we write a song. And it is the exact, most perfect song. The missing piece on the album.

And I leave with goose bumps. And I can’t sleep.

And I had to tell you… sometimes I love this job to pieces and simply cannot get enough.

Tonight made me love it.

And it is 1:12 a.m. now. And I think that means I almost haven’t slept in 24 hours.

But it doesn’t really matter. I just wrote a song with Phil. I listen to Phil’s music when I workout and when I worship. I sing my head off at his concerts; and I counted down the days till I could sneak a copy of his new album away. And Phil is just a normal guy… but when you get to work with people you love and it all clicks in place and all the stars align and you leave wanting to (ok, I did) jump up and down and say, “oh my gosh…. I can’t believe that just happened!”

Well, in my book… that’s the perfect ending to a very long day.

Late Night Ramblings

2009-09-20T02:01:00.002-05:00

So my friends... you must go read this blog. I know, I know. Another one. And yeah, bring your Kleenex.

I told you that I met one of the ladies on Katie's board of directors... her name is Suzanne. I also told you that she and her husband Mike were going back to adopt another child, Josie Love, to add to the 6 or 7 they already have. But I did not tell you that she was documenting their trip and their time with Katie on the blog: joiningthejourney.blogspot.com

I like that. Joining the journey.

When I talked to Suzanne over the phone and in person I found out she was just a normal person like me, who stumbled upon Katie's blog and felt compelled to, well, join the journey. And now she is loving on Katie's 13 girls in Uganda right this very minute. Amazing. What an unexpected journey huh? And now?

Now their journey has become more complicated, painful, and sacrificial than Suzanne and Mike were bargaining for ...

Josie Love just tested positive for HIV.

She was tested early on for a number of illnesses (as a part of the adoption process) and HIV was never a part of the picture. But now, this beautiful mom is looking at her daughter and realizing this is not what she bargained for. This is bigger. Harder. More demanding. Terrifying. Heart wrenching. Uncharted territory. This is the journey God? I think right now it probably feels more like a roller coaster ride that has launched off the track and into mid-air...

Another reminder that the journey is unpredictable. And yet again, I am taken back to the words of Jesus in Matthew, "whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it," and I am reminded that following the somewhat insane, radical, sacrificial way of Jesus involves LOSS. It has to.

Loss of my ideas, big plans, and control over the journey. Loss of life as I have known it. My friend Kim says it means losing her ability to completely guard her kids from the world as she seeks to allow her children and her family to become more accessible to other children and families in the neighborhood who don't, perhaps, live the same way as they do. And for me it means giving up my rights to being a normal mom who gets to have Annie on a perfect schedule, makes my own baby food, and has the luxury of protecting my child from germs, strangers, public bathrooms, and being over stimulated. Nope. I have no control over those things. My baby girl's upbringing is a part of my sacrifice. And I entrust it into God's hand... this crazy journey.

Like the C.S. Lewis quote my friend Alli posted in the comment section on Tough Topic Tuesday, if we are not feeling the pinch of sacrifice, then we could be doing more. And we probably should be doing more. Much more. I know. Not exactly what we want to hear, but it's the truth.

"If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small."

I imagine Suzanne is feeling the pinch today. Oh that she would be deeply reminded that the pinch, the squeeze, the struggle, the pain means she is exactly where she is supposed to be. Where we are all supposed to be. If there is no pinch, is it really a sacrifice?

Pray for Suzanne, Mike, and their whole family. And leave her an encouraging word if you get the chance. You can never receive to many prayers... too many words of encouragement.

Keep Em' Coming

Your responses and pledges to help Katie in her work have been overwhelming. Keep them coming.

I woke up at 4:33 a.m. the other day thinking, "What if we don't raise the $6,000?" I thought about how embarrassed or ashamed I would feel that I couldn't pull it off. And God so clearly said, "YOU??? I will move my people not you. And you should trust that they will respond accordingly. How small your dreams are Jenny."

And then I thought... $6,000 is way too small. And tonight, as I sit in my Las Vegas hotel room and watch the people scurry around outside of the MGM Hotel and Casino after a big fight night; people who have easily dropped thousands of dollars on planes, hotels, tickets, merchandise and will now pour money into a night of slot machines, women, and alcohol I think... if they can drop thousands of dollars so easily... can't we? Do I assume Christians are poor? That Christ followers can't have money and can't give freely? That it will take hundreds of people to come up with $6,000? Shame on me for thinking so small.

5,000 people read this blog every month. (Yep, that means there are LOTS of blurkers :)

If we can't raise $6,000 or $60,000 for that matter, there is a problem.

This isn't about me pressuring you. This is about me realizing how small my thinking and believing have been.

Some of you have very little money, like Ryan and I. But some of you have quite a bit; you could easily write a check for $6,000. And some are in between. Others have things you can sacrifice. While others of you can get your community groups, Sunday school classes, church, co-workers, or neighbors in on it. There is a way for each of us to be involved. I love that one person is going to set up a collection at their families restaurant, while Lauren-Michelle is going to put off a new long board or make-up. One girl is giving up part of her first pay check and people are trying to figure out how to get their money to Katie from different parts of the world. Amazing. SO, I will stop my little thinking now.

We will announce the collection day and where to send your money soon, but for now, keep dreaming, thinking, praying and figuring out how you and your family, friends, and church can be involved and can make a huge difference in the lives of an entire village of beautiful children and a girl named Katie who has taken the load less traveled to answer the call and go.

And yes...

There are more people than just Katie who need the financial support. Oh my gosh, there are so many people who need the money. So many amazing organizations, causes, and people who are out in the world being God's hands and feet. SO many basic needs that need meeting. And yet, I am just one girl. So for now, this one girl is trying to help another girl... who is changing 13 others girls and helping an entire village.

After Katie, God will bring me someone new. Like Elda or Christina or the little boys we helped from Craigslist last year who needed underwear, socks, and backpacks. Or Mocha Club or Buckner's Children Home or fill in the blank... and don't worry, if one person writes a $6,000 check... please do not panic! I promise, there are more Katie's.

I trust God will bring you people who need to be supported with your prayers, your time, and your finances... I trust, that if you let Him, He will wreck your journey and lead you to lose yourself so that you can truly find life.

Life to the full. Life abundantly. Oh that we would never thirst again, that our hearts would be captured, that our finite, silly plans would be wrecked. Oh that we could be sons and daughters of God who abandon ourselves to embark on a journey like none other.

SO whether it's joining me, Suzanne, Mike, Katie and the people of Uganda or finally plunging into the journey already at your fingertips and in your back yard (or both)... take the plunge.

It's well worth it. Here's to asking God to wreck our journeys so that we can truly...

join His journey

Food, Food, Food Friday...

2009-09-18T11:37:00.004-05:00

I saw a kid put this on his plate at a recent show. Really? There are so many things wrong with this picture.

She's trying. But seriously, she is way more interested in smiling so the cereal just runs down her face while she hams it up and smiles and coos.

My new favorite cupcake place in Franklin, Tennessee. Natticakes.

I think it's probably about 1,000 calories just in the massive beautiful blob of frosting on top. I've had three this weeks. (How many chickens in Africa would that buy???)

And now folks, for my hands down favorite pastry shop in the country where you can get this amazing, hamburger size cream puff...

Mikes's Pastry in Boston. Located on Hanover Street in the North End (Little Italy) this place had a line out the door this past Saturday night. And it always does. Why? Because it is the best cannoli and best cream puff on this side of heaven. Trust me. This is the highlight of every visit to Boston.

That and eating the clam chowder at Legal Seafood. Um. I love Boston!

Tough Topic Tuesday

2009-09-15T18:55:00.005-05:00

I know nothing of sacrifice and yet I feel sorry for myself.

We cannot fully repay the hospital for Annie. We cannot fully pay the IRS for self-employment taxes this past year (I figure if I am not on welfare and agree not to use public highways or public parks or public bathrooms this might be one they could just overlook, right?). I am tired and I feel slightly lonely on the road this time around. I can’t get rid of my acne or the final ten pounds I gained during pregnancy and this weekend I have to go to Vegas with a bunch of stupid pretty girls who are going to look amazing and I am going to have to wear a trash sack everywhere I go. My family all moved away to tim-buck-to. And dangit, every other band pulls up to shows in their tour buses; we pull up in a white minivan.

Blah, blah, blah.

I am tired because I got to sing my own songs from stage this weekend; I got to do what I love (or as my college pastor told me last week, I got what I prayed for). I am exhausted because it’s pretty tough to be in Nashville, New York, Boston, and Maine all in one weekend. Whew, poor me. I have acne and a big butt because I brought a beautiful, smart, charming, whimsical, pure, innocent, HEALTHY, perfect little baby into this world. We made her. She grew in my stomach. I grew a freaking person inside of me; of course my butt is bigger. My family has moved to tim-buck-to because they passionately love Jesus and have committed themselves to following his voice; even if it costs them something like not being close to their granddaughter. My sister’s are scattered because they are educated, smart, and FREE to pursue their dreams with their husbands and they are doing so. I am going to Vegas with a few days of free vacation built in… isn’t that enough? And shouldn’t I be happy that my girlfriends are beautiful? I can’t pay the bills because I don’t have a real salary. I don’t have a real salary because I don’t have a real job. I don’t have a real job because I have been incredibly blessed to play music, to communicate something genuine and life giving to people, to travel the world, and to live on faith and a whim.

How could I possibly feel sorry for myself?

And yet, I am so tempted to. Something about the last month has just brought me to my knees and made me want to throw in the towel. Made me want to quit. What’s worse, it’s made me somehow believe that I have it rough, that I actually have legitimate reasons for feeling sorry for myself.

Sitting in that place…
It was in one of those moments two weeks ago that I found myself downstairs in a Hilton lobby checking my email. I had several comments from the blog in my inbox that said, “Jenny, you have to read this girls blog, you would love it.”

These are usually the suggestions I skip over. Not because I don’t believe you, but because I don’t have enough time. But this particular morning I had time. Annie and Ryan were asleep and I was trying to sneak in a cup of coffee before we hit the road for the next show. So, on a whim, I clicked the link and found myself on a blog called kissesfromkatie.

The blog had a simple black background and a picture of a young, beautiful girl who was laughing with a man who, I presumed, was from Africa. They looked so happy. They looked so far from self-pity or self-loathing. They radiated joy. I was instantly convicted and in the same breath captured by this girls face. There was something about her face.

I began skimming over her blogs when a certain entry caught my eye. It was a narrative of her life. She starts at age 16. She wants to go to Africa and work in an orphanage. She goes. She falls in love. The man at the orphanage tells her she must come back and teach kindergarten. She says she is too young. She has to go home and go to college first. He says no, she is supposed to come now. She starts caring for these children. Teaching them. Loving them. And… playing mom to them.

The narrative continues. She comes home for her first semester of college… she is miserable. This is not where God wants for her to be. She knows she has to go back.

And by the end of this blog… she has gone against her parent’s wishes for her to attend college. She has gone against what is logical, practical, wise, and even safe for a girl her age. For any girl. Well, for any person. She has literally gone against what any normal person would do. Yet, I do not get the sense that she is rebellious or out to dishonor her parents. I do not get the sense that she is on some hell-bent agenda to do what she wants to do no matter what. I do not get the sense that her life is hopeless and lost and she is trying to fix it by skipping town and going to a different country. I do not get the sense that she is doing what she is doing for the attention, glory, or some exalted false humility she may achieve from it. I do not get the idea that she will only be there for a short time simply to check something off her list and return home to start her normal life up again. I do not get the sense that she even really knows what she is doing or what comes next. I do not even get the sense that she is weird or crazy, eccentric or strange.

No, I do not sense any of these things as I read.

Instead, I distinctly sense Jesus.

Jesus Christ, the son of God, who touched lepers, welcomed in prostitutes, let children crawl all over him like he was a jungle gym, let bleeding women touch his garments, and touched people… physically touched them.

I have never met Katie, but I hear that she physically touches every single person she meets. No matter what disease plagues their body.

I sense Jesus himself…

I see a glimpse of Jesus himself. And her name is Katie. She has moved to Uganda on her own to care for orphans. No, not just care for, she has gone to Uganda and single handedly adopted 13 abandoned children. She is a mom to 13 children. She is 20. I am almost 29 and I have pity parties about the woes of raising one small child who has more food, love, medicine, and clothes than she could ever possibly need. Katie is 20. She is keeping 13 children alive, sending them to school each day, helping them with homework each night, feeding them, keeping them healthy, giving them the love of a mother and father all by herself. How can I have a pity party now?

Katie is not in Uganda through Compassion International or some other big organization. She is in a village that no one else has gone to. She simply went where she was needed. She is there alone with one other girl from the village and her 13 children. Except for Saturdays… that’s when she and her 13 adopted children prepare food for over 1200 children in the village. Yep, Saturday she feeds 1200 children.

Want to know what else she does? She takes in any sick child in need of medical attention. She de-worms babies who are on their deathbeds. She gives stitches. And bathes kids who have open sores oozing with infection. She does not turn a sick child away from her house; instead she brings them home with her and nurses them back to health. And if she doesn’t know what to do for them she calls back home and a doctor who does know will walk her through it. She’s no doctor. She’s barely out of high school. But if she doesn’t do it, then who will? At least that’s what Katie says.

And on Saturday, when she feeds the 1200, she also leads a worship service of music and praise and they all sing together. All 1200 of them.

Can we just get back to the fact that she de-worms babies? That means she helps the babies poop out worms that have infested these little babies bodies. I can’t even watch that stuff on TV without crying, but there she is, 20 years old, doing it because, “if she doesn’t, who will?”

I read about Katie, but really, I am reading about Jesus.

What’s next…
I wipe away a steady stream of tears flowing down my face. I look up and remember that I am sitting in America. In a Hilton hotel. I wonder what would have happened to my life if I had followed some of those quiet nudges and whispers years ago? The ones that said, “Just go Jenny. Just go there and don’t come home. That can be your home. They can be your family.” I wonder what it would have looked like for me to be brave enough to follow such an insane noise? Katie gives me a glimpse. I wonder if it is too late for me to be used by God in such a powerful way? I wonder if I have ever sacrificed like Katie?

I am lost in this girl’s story. And the words of Jesus come to my mind.

“Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus replied, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead.” Matthew 8:19-22.

Surely Jesus didn’t mean this? Let the dead bury their dead? If you want to follow me, follow me alone, and do nothing else first? That’s way too intense. Surely Katie is the weird, strange exception. Right Lord? Please, tell me that you don’t really want us to be eccentric or…

Sacrificial?

And then a few pages over God literally leads me through scripture, “Anyone who loves his father and mother more than me is not worth of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worth of me; any anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worth of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10: 37-39.

Back to Katie. Sometimes this very raw girl is sad and I am sad with her. Sometimes she is adventurous and happy. But in a more recent post she is angry. Why, she asks, are there children starving to death when there is enough money in the world that another child should never die of malnutrition? Why are there orphans when there are enough Christians in the world to each adopt one child and rid the world all together of orphans? Why are there perfectly smart, brilliant little kids idly sitting on the side of the road each day because they cannot afford to go to school when there are enough American families who could each adopt one child and make sure they get an education? Why? It is no longer sad, she says. It is infuriating. She is angry. And, after reading the final blog post, I am angry with her. Disgusted really.

And I hear Jesus say… Jenny, one day you will be accountable. Your generation will be accountable. She is asking a good question Jenny. Why? Why Jenny? Why are these kids still hungry? Why do they still lack basic medicine? Why are they suffering while you sit in the Hilton hotel?

Tough Topic Tuesday
So today I ask you the same thing. Why? And more importantly, what will we do about it? The New Testament is clear. Care for the poor, the orphans, and the widows. The least of these. Lose your life to find it. What you do unto them, you do unto God himself. The life of Jesus was sacrificial. He told us that to follow him meant sacrifice, so much sacrifice that many who heard left Jesus sad because they knew they could not give that much of themselves. We know what the New Testament says and we know what the life of Jesus looked like… we know these things, yet still, we are so slow to do anything. We are hardly doing anything.

I am hardly doing anything.

And my question today is are we living sacrificially? Is there anything sacrificial about your life? Your money? Your time? Your future? Anything?

The thing is, I don’t know that I’m really sacrificing anything so that the needs of others are met.
As I have shared Katie’s story there have been skeptics. “Oh that’s nice for her.” Or “Wow, I could never do that.” Or, “How do we know she’s using the money well?” Really? I want to strangle those people. I mean the options are to buy chickens or goats… not a lot more she can do with the money. And a few responses have been cynical, “We can’t fix Africa, Africa has to fix itself.” Jeez, good thing Jesus didn’t say that.

We’re aren’t talking about fixing Africa, we are talking about caring for the least of these… wherever they are.

*Waiting on government’s, legislation, or other worldly institutions to fix it is not the answer (Though it is part of the answer. We cannot write off the efforts of NGO’s, government, or other institutions, but neither can we solely rely on them. They are only a part.).* We must do something. Big. Not little. We must wake up. Now, not later. We must act.

And I am frustrated because I am not saying anything knew. We all know this, we know what we should do and could do… we just don’t quite get around to doing it. Somewhere along the way we have to stop viewing Katie as the eccentric fringe and view Katie as the norm. She was valedictorian and homecoming queen. This is a normal chic who is following the hard, sacrificial, narrow road of Christ, not a strange, rare, saint. She is simply doing what needs to be done. And unfortunately, that means she is a minority.

I must do something…
I head back up to my hotel room in a daze. There is a lump in my throat and a sinking feeling in my stomach. I am partly feeling sick from conviction. But I am, with each passing second, more and more overwhelmed with a sense of urgency. I must do something. I must act. Now. This is not an emotional reaction… this is the Holy Spirit.

I think about Katie for days. Literally, I cannot sleep. I cannot stop telling Ryan about her. I cannot stop calling my friends and saying… you have to read this blog. This goes on for days. Katie has awoken something in me. That thing in each of us that really longs to lay down every single thing we have and give our entire existence over for God’s use. That passion that erupts when you think about what it would be like to actually give yourself away, to sacrifice…

Sacrifice. That’s the word. I have never really sacrificed anything. Done something for God that has put me out, that has required deep trust, which has really jeopardized my own wealth, health, comfort, or happiness. No, I have never truly sacrificed. I wonder if I can actually do such a thing? What could I sacrifice to help Katie? What does Katie need? How can I help? What should I do next?

I asked God to guide me. I emailed two ladies from the board of directors that work with Katie. They “basically make sure Katie can do what God has called her to do without her having to worry about resources,” and also, “Try to foresee how Katie is going to burn-out next and we try and beat her to that place so we can keep her alive and keep her going and doing what she is doing.” These two ladies joined Katie’s side and created a “board of directors” two years ago when they stumbled across her blog and couldn’t sleep for weeks either.

I met with one of the ladies last week. She was headed to Uganda to visit Katie and to adopt her 6th child that Katie has insisted be adopted by someone. I send Katie some pajama pants, loufas, lip-gloss, and stickers for her kids. She might be sacrificing everything, but every girl needs cute pajama pants. I ask Stacy what Katie needs.

Right now, she says, Katie needs to buy a piece of land and build a clinic next to her house so that she will stop bringing in sick babies and children off the street and into the living room with her other 13 children! They also need to build a few latrines. Apparently the 1200 children are stopping up the ONE toilet she has at the house. She needs $6,000 to buy the land. Then they need money to build a basic clinic.

Fine, I say. We will get the $6,000 and then we will start raising money for the clinic (which by the way has a waiting list over a year long of doctors and nurses who have already committed their time. They are simply waiting on a place to be built).

And so now, here I am, telling you about Katie and asking you to do something tough… help me raise $6,000? Or $10,000? Or however much we can raise?

Be sacrificial?

For me, that means the money I get from the WiiFit I am currently selling on eBay… will now go to Katie. I really wanted a new fall outfit. And I really, really wanted to get my hair colored and my disastrous personal haircut fixed. But I have clothes; and my hair is just hair. I know it’s stupid, but it is a struggle to even turn over $75. But for me it is my first step to giving away my excess. I have a long list of other things I am going to try and sell as well. Starting with my fancy silverware I registered for when I was married. I mean, it is beautiful. And I am sure it would be so fun to feel like Martha Stewart one day and entertain people with my beautiful place settings and sterling silver ware. But really? There are children with worms and scabies and a 20 year old who needs money to buy chickens for protein, baby formula, and de-worming medicine and I am going to hang on to my forks? Forks? Spoons? Fancy butter knives? What is wrong with our culture?!?

So I am asking you to join me the next few weeks in finding ways to sacrifice here and there and help me raise the $6,000 to buy Katie this piece of land. We will come up with as much money as possible, and then at the end of the month, we will buy this little plop of land in Uganda.
Don’t take my word for it, go read for yourself (www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com) and then lets find a way to get her the money she needs… for the land, and then, maybe even the clinic.
Tough? It really shouldn’t be. We are the richest people to ever live in the history of the world. It’s just a matter of choosing to be sacrificial.

So, I know your money and time and resources might already be going somewhere… but can they stretch to one more place? Can we pull together $6,000?

You can begin to pledge your money in the comments section and more details will come on where to send your money later this week… I will let you know the running total…

2009-09-13T09:27:00.003-05:00

*This will begin a series of picture inspired blogs. I'm too tired to be original this week. Hope you enjoy.*

It's like having my very own porcelin doll.

Music time in the studio. This week we are singing all of the songs off of The Sound Of Music. She loves "These are a Few of My Favorite Things." We add in The Dallas Cowboys, Mexican food, and cupcakes. And this week we will add in Troy, Jimmy, Howie and the other boys from Fox; Boston; Grandma Ila; and people from Maine who wait in the autograph line to give us Lobster rolls after we talk about wanting a lobster on stage. Maybe we will also work on learning the word "Lobster."

Look, I am trying not to be biased, but this kid is smart. She devours books.

A few weeks ago someone left a comment on the blog saying they were, "devouring old posts like Nancy Drew books." This AMAZING compliment has stayed with me. I fell in love with reading (and I am quite sure I also developed a severe anxiety disorder) by reading about Nancy, Bess, and George and their terrifying adventures in secret passageways, old houses, and hidden lakefront properties. I'm talking the good Nancy Drew books people, the classics, by Carolyn Keene.

I stumbled upon the original series of books in my grandparent's musky attic when I was in the fourth grade. Every month I would visit them in Mississippi and before going home to Texas I would go and pilfer as many books as I could fit in my backpack.

And then my alternate life began.

I read furiously on the Sunday afternoon drive back to Texas. I would read for so long that my eyes would burn and threaten mutiny. Still, I sat on the edge of my mental capacity, on the brink of near blindness, on the verge of shear panic, and I would devour the adventures of Nancy Drew from cover to cover. Sometimes I wouldn't even get out of the car at gas stations for snacks. And you know something has sucked me in and held me prisoner if I skip out on the food. Monday mornings I would go back to school all foggy and exhausted. The rest of these chumps went to Showbiz pizza or Six Flags over the weekend but I went to find a secret clock in a secret closet in a secret house and I was almost run off the road, kidnapped, and killed twice. My life was way more interesting than theirs.

Grandma rolled her over after nap time and she looked like this. Gosh I love this kid.

Each week we try and learn new things. Last week we started learning to eat grass. This is the mark of a true Southern woman. If we have to, we know how to properly eat grass.

No rest for the weary. Unless your husband builds you a really nice bed made out of metal chairs. Then, a nap is only a matter of tuning out the other band on stage, the people who are eating dinner at the table right behind you, and the hum of the coke machine at the foot of your greenroom-metal-chair-bed that your poor 5 month old baby has to nap on. Annie doesn't know any different. This kid would be happy living in a trash can.

Ryan snapped this while we were taking a walk by the cornfields in Indiana. I love this picture. It makes me happy.

2009-09-11T10:44:00.002-05:00

In La Guardia airport hoping to make it to Maine. Our flight was cancelled. Up at 4:30 am and my eyeballs are woozy. I forgot today was 9/11. In this city, I am the exception.

Praying for the families left behind... Sent from my iPhone

Four Kids in the Suburbs and all

2009-09-10T11:11:00.002-05:00

My sister Melissa is one of my favorite people in the world. She is also one of the most funny people in the world. I mean, maybe this doesn't sound funny to you, but if you could only hear her say it, I promise you would be laughing and you would be in love... with her that is. Here is an excerpt from her blog today:

"Sorry for the long delay! I'm sure most of you thought Tim and I fell into the ocean and were eaten by angry dolphins, or maybe you thought Hawaii doesn't receive internet connection, that it is really like the TV show LOST and some evil weird guy named Ben is jamming all the satellite devices on the island. Well, the sad truth is, I've just fallen behind on life and I'm only beginning to catch up."

Angry dolphins? This cracked me up. Melissa has a great blog up today about Esther (and yes, my sister is like the most beautiful person in the world, so don't hate her, she can't help it). Check it out and leave her a comment if you get a chance. That will make her happy and it will surprise her (cause Lord knows she's about 6 months behind on this blog, so it really will be a surprise! Oh yay, I love this idea. Surprise Jenny's sister day! Lets leave her like 100 comments! I can't do this with my other sister though... she actually reads what I write! Thanks Miguel :)

***

I am sitting on the front porch of our recording studio in Franklin, Tennessee. The part of Franklin I am sitting in is part Pleasantville, part Bridges of Madison County, part Fried Green Tomatoes (please tell me you have watched this), and part Horse Whisperer. Beautiful. Wealthy. Classy. Refined. Lots of moms gathered at adorable tea parlors and pastry shops having coffee and then heading out, in their Range Rovers, for yoga class together. Not exactly the picture of middle class America. At least not the middle class America I come from.

And low and behold as I am taking in the richness of this beautiful moment two ghetto, souped-up, low-riding, bass thumping cars pull up at the stoplight in front of the studio. One car is red. One car is silver. They both rev up their engines, which is totally impolite to do in front of such beautiful fall leaves and refined lady folk in their fancy cars. Totally impolite. I worry these two cars are from opposite gangs. I worry they are about to spill their red blood into my very beautiful, black and white, Pleasantville movie scene.

Then in an unexpected moment of ghetto chivalry, the low-riding thugs who apparently did not know one another exchanged polite waves to each other. It was so cute. Even the thugs are classy here. I love this place.

***

One of my best friends, Kim, has a great blog up today. I have been wanting to tell you guys about Kim and I for some time now. She showed up out of no where like a long lost relative, made herself at home in my life, and pursued me with the intensity of a Mark Kay lady. (No offense Mark Kay ladies. I love ya. I'd love you a whole lot more if someone could get me a sample of that lip stuff that makes all the dead things go away and promises to make you the bestest, most kissable lipped person in the world).

Kim has four kids, a smarty-pants husband (who, by the way, is a really amazing husband), three sisters, a mom, and a cat. Ok. No cat. But it sounded really good right there. The truth is, Kim and I technically shouldn't be good friends. She is older than me and has a 12 year old. I am younger than her and barely know how to keep my newborn alive. We live in different cities. We go to different churches. We have different circles of friends. We have different hobbies.

But one December, after I was ready to give up on music, my marriage, and my faith I sat down with God and told him I was tired. I asked him for help. Begged him for a friend. A mentor. A spiritual counselor. Someone who had enough time to keep up with me on the road, who had enough energy to encourage me and love me, who had enough courage to confront me, who had a desire to pour into me the same amount of time and passion I was pouring out on those around me. Someone I didn't have to hassle or please or beg or do anything for... they could just step in and be something for me because they wanted to. It was a tall order. But I needed tangible, sacrificial love from someone down here on earth. I told God it was a deal breaker. Among many other deal breakers, this was at the top of the list.

And a few days later this (lady/girl/woman, I wasn't sure how to define her?) that I vaguely knew from an old church I led worship at wrote me an email. I still have it printed out and saved in my forever box. Out of no where she wrote and said, "Jenny, this sounds crazy, but I think I am supposed to be your friend." She went on to say she thought I needed support, love, prayer, a mentor, an encourager, someone who would pour into me the way I poured into others and someone who just did so without even being asked to. Y'all word for word, out of NO WHERE, Kim wrote me an email that, methodically and in-detail answered every single thing I had begged the Lord for.

We have been amazing friends ever since. The first year she sort of nursed me back to health. And hopefully the second year I have just been her equal and been able to pour into her and give her a few of the things she has given me. Had you asked me three years ago if I would ever have good, lifelong, life-giving friends I would have said... "nobody likes me, everybody hates me (or uses me or doesn't know that I even need anything or they are just lazy friends), I guess I'll go and eat worms." I would have never said, "Yes, I am going to have amazing people in my life and be best friends with a mom who has four kids."

Let's be honest, I would have thought that might be sort of lame. Nope. It's just the way it is supposed to be. I am best friends with a mom who has four kid. She sort of feels like my sister. Sometimes my mom. Sometimes my friend. Sometimes my pastor. She wears a lot of hats.

And that whole long story came up just because I wanted you to know that she has a really good blog up today.

Kim and Leon have started a Sunday morning breakfast club for the kids in their neighborhood (kids who really need the love they are not getting at home). This blog details her journey.

Kim might not ever live in Africa, she might not ever adopt orphans, she may not do the things you or I would associate with someone who is on a completely selfless, monk-like, Mother Theresa journey, in some foreign land... but she is one of the only moms I've ever met that just takes her kids, on a regular basis, to find homeless people so they can give them water, blankets, and some extra clothes from around the house.

Kim is one of the only ladies I know that stuck with a church that was literally dying; not because it was the place that best met her needs or provided the greatest programs for her children, but because they felt God calling them to stay... calling them to be a part of making it better.

Kim sits outside, during her precious free-time (which means she has to wake up earlier or go to bed later to get things done) so she can play mom to a bunch of girls in the neighborhood who really need the love of a mom.

Kim give me her extra shopping money so I can go buy "concert clothes." She could be using it for herself, her house, her kids, any number of things, but she gives it to me because she wants me to feel confidant on stage (and knows I'm too broke to get new stuff!).

Kim reminds me, and hopefully she will remind you, that if you seek to live each day thoughtfully, it doesn't matter where you are or who you are (or how flawed you might be as she will attest she is not a perfect lady), God can use you to be a part of what He is doing. Through her simple story of starting a breakfast club and inviting the neighborhood kids over for pancakes, crafts, and dance time I was convicted.

It's just so simple.

Living beyond yourself. Pouring into others. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a saint. If you choose to partner with the nudgings of God's very spirit you can make a lasting difference in people's lives. You can be a catalyst. God can use you.

Four kids in the suburbs and all.

Our Week in a Nutshell...

2009-09-06T11:45:00.000-05:00

Yep, this about sums up this week.

Monday

2009-09-06T11:44:00.000-05:00

This past week has about sent me into early retirement. Here's what it looked like.

Monday.

We flew home that morning (after an amazing weekend of shows with the people of Indiana) and hit the ground running. Ryan and I had so much work to do that we drove an hour away to his parent’s house so that they could watch Annie while we got our “computer” jobs done.

Annie was not down for this drive. Not after an airplane ride and two car rides the day before which left her in the car seat for close to five hours. Nope. She was having no part of this.

She went ballistic.

Ryan jumped in the back seat to soothe her.

She gave him the stink eye.

She continued her high-pitched squealy scream.

We gave in. We pulled over in a stuffy, upscale shopping center and we looked like worn-down airplane rats (gypsies if you will). Ryan went into Smoothie King to ask for free water and I held our dirty, angry, crying baby outside on the bench in the Texas heat.

The rich ladies looked at me. I pulled out the pour-n-go packet of formula from my bag, whipped up a bottle, and began to calm this little person down. Just when it got quiet, I heard a buzz. Then another buzz. Then lots of buzzes.

This bench was like a rich person’s house… only meant for looking at. It was surrounded by big potted plants and needed a sign that read, “Warning: This bench is just meant to be looked at and not actually sat upon. In reality, we don’t want you sitting in front of our stores anyways. That’s why the bench is surrounded by an entire rainforest of plants, shrubs, bushes, and flowers. And, just in case you don’t get the hint, we’ve planted three beehives and wasp colonies to ensure you don’t sit here. But thank you for visiting our shops. Really, we are happy that you came our way today.”

I was sitting in a bee colony. And this is a moment, as a parent, you are trying not to scream like a little girl…no, you are trying to stay calm and not instill fear in your kids (The way my mom did with us when my dad was working night shifts as a police officer. “What was that noise? Did you hear that? Girls, be quiet! Jenny you get a knife from the kitchen. Melissa you grab the phone. Sarah, you stay under your covers.” Wow. Thanks lady. I’m still dealing with anxiety attacks and reaching for butcher knives). So, as calmly as I could, I brought Annie up to my chest, held her tight, buried her eyes into my arms so she couldn’t see…

Then I screamed like a little girl, bolted from the bench, and opened up the door to the first store and ran in. Literally, I ran in.

I was panting. I’ve got a baby and a bottle in one arm, an ugly purse and drool running down the other arm, no make-up, and we look like airplane rats. Now I’m in some high-end swanky boutique with really cute clothes that, I tell myself, I could have fit into long before the stretch marks. That is, if I could’ve afforded them. “Stop Jenny. No room for self-defeat right now.”

The two gorgeous college girls with boob jobs, blonde hair, and awesome outfits that were working there just sort of looked at me. No welcome or anything.

What? I can shop in your stupid store. In this moment I wish I had a $1,000 to drop just to make a point. Stupid point, I know. But dang I wanted to make it.

So, I strolled around (in my sweats, hair falling into my face, still feeding my baby with a petrified look that should’ve let everyone know I was just barely attacked by the wasps that live on their fake-not-for-real-people-to-sit-on bench) looking intently at each piece of clothing and stitching as if I were the master of their universe and I had every intention of purchasing something real nice (again, spoken as Eddie from Christmas Vacation). As if I were intentionally planning on getting out of the house that day to go to their store. As if I have so much money and so much class that I don’t even care how I go into a store, I just go when and how I please.

I was tempted to have them set up a fitting room for me and order the finest clothes sent there for my approval. But then I remembered how exhausted I was. I just needed to get this baby fed and get on with the trip.

“Hum. Perhaps next time I will buy something from you ladies,” I said in my head. I scanned the store over with my eyes, giving it a look of disdain. And then in my Meryl Streep, Devil Wears Prada, voice I said to them in my head, “That will be all.” And I left.

Tuesday and Wednesday

2009-09-06T11:43:00.000-05:00

I am skipping over the rest of Monday night. Like the massage I got out of desperation from the only woman giving a massage in that town at that time of the night. She worked from a building where I am quite sure people actually go into just so they can smoke. Maybe it’s backwards there. They work outside and come inside for a smoke. I am not sure. But I was sick within minutes from the smell and totally stressed out. Woman, I am coming to you for healing but I am leaving with second hand smoke lung cancer. All I could see were those tar commercials from the 80’s with the little shriveled dying lungs, little dancing carcinogens, and I could here the song that my friend Jeff sings that he learned in first grade, “We are the smoke-free class of 2000, two triple zero, everyone’s a hero.” I started feeling cancerous instantly. I should’ve left but I felt bad.

And, in the nicest but most honest way I know how to say it, it was like getting a massage from a sumo-wrestler. It took every ounce of energy and will power to doze off and not pay attention to the fact that my head or foot or whatever body part she was working on seemed to disappear somewhere within her rolls and rolls and rolls of skin. Nope. That was not four layers of armpit just swishing back and forth over my forehead; it was a very heavy raincloud, so go back to sleep.

So Tuesday and Wednesday?

Tuesday and Wednesday we did one final round of songwriting for the album that, yes, we start recording on Monday morning. This lasted all day long. Ryan watched Annie. I expended the last little bits of brainpower that I had on songs that will probably not even make it onto the album. I felt done, you know, with life in general. I just wanted Oprah and ice cream. Instead, I went home and watched Annie so Ryan could take a break and get his work done.

Exhausting. We were both worn out.

Thursday

2009-09-06T11:39:00.003-05:00

Patiently watching Mom and Dad pack.

Helping mom with laundry.

This morning it dawns on me that we leave after our show on Saturday to go record the new album in Nashville and then we head straight into a tour with Sanctus Real. I won’t be home until the end of October. Two whole months. By then my baby will be almost 7 months old. She is going on 5 months now. By then my baby will have her first tooth. By then the weather will be cold. By then she will be eating solids (if I am ever brave enough to feed them to her). By then I will need a Halloween costume for her. And for me. We are going to be matching this year; I can’t believe I get to start trick-or-treating all over again! This makes me supremely happy! I will finally get my chance to be the Little Mermaid! By then she will wear different size diapers, fit in different clothes, and she will need a coat. And maybe some gloves. Oh, and maybe her feet will fit into shoes by then.

How do you pack for such an outing? I have mom friends who get overwhelmed bringing their babies somewhere new for a week. And here I am staring down two months. Who signed me up for this gig? I don’t think I want it today.

I want to crawl back in bed and claim disability. Early retirement. I want to lay on the couch and eat donuts. I want to move to Australia. (I stole this line from Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, NO Good, Very Bad Day.)

I mope for a while and then rally the troops. I spend Thursday and Friday packing and cleaning. Remembering to turn off the ice machine, unplug chords from the wall, and scrubbing toilets. I try and give the small amounts of food I have in the fridge to the neighbors because I cannot bear to throw away perfectly decent food. I scrub the shower with my toothbrush, which I do not use again. I am afraid that if I leave the shower with even a bit of mold or mildew I will come home to a butterfly or insect garden in my bathtub. That would be gross.

Annie wakes up Friday night at 2:30 a.m. covered, head to toe in her own urine. We switched to Luvs diapers. Luvs diapers are now my enemy. I have to basically bathe her on the changing station, feed her, and try to get her back to sleep… in my bed. I felt so bad for her. Who knows how long she had been lying there like that. And the kid doesn’t cry when she’s unhappy, she just rolls with it, or in this case, lies with it. We woke up three hours later and left the house for our show today. And now, we are driving home with an ETA of 12:15 p.m.

Whew. Australia does sound nice.

But tomorrow we will leave for Nashville.

And tomorrow a new week begins.

Epilogue

2009-09-06T11:38:00.000-05:00

Epilogue.

Annie is sleeping. The boys are in the van driving to Nashville. I am meeting my mother-in-law at the airport in an hour and we are taking Annie to airport via my second home: American Airlines.

I have a stomachache. I am so tired. My body hurts. We packed 7 suitcases total. And the show we did played in the dirt bowl last night in San Angelo? Three hours behind. So we didn’t get home until really, really late (I feel bad for Third Day. Mac twittered a little after 11 p.m. and said they were still not on stage. They were supposed to be on between 8:00-9:00 p.m. Wow.)

Anyways. That’s all over now and I am sitting on the couch, literally in a daze, trying to catch my breath. It feels good though. The kind of catching your breath you do after a good run or hard workout when you know you have just done something good for your body and soul. It sort of feels like that.

I am grateful for my mother-in-law this morning.

I was raised in a family of career women and I can’t say that I’ve always understood her choice to stay home and be a full-time mom. After her sons left she continued on as a full-time wife and full-time, unpaid, volunteer at church who teaches choir and leads an amazing, in-depth women’s Bible study. I never thought it was wrong; I just never understood it.

I told her this week how much her helping us with Annie means to me. How her being able to drop everything and come to Nashville while we record is the best blessing in the whole world; for us, but more importantly, for Annie Boo.

She said she had always known she was called to serve her family and the church and that in the midst of that call sometimes she felt misunderstood or judged for her decisions. When money was tight, and her having a salaried job would have made a huge impact, she held firm to the belief that God had called and gifted her to be available to her children, family, friends, and church. I think this took amazing obedience on her part.

Now she is a stay-at-home grandma. I wonder if God knew that I would desperately need the help? I wonder if He weaves our dreams and ambitions and cultivates things within our hearts so early in life because he knows, perhaps, that Ila’s son will go on to make music and travel all over the country and Jenny’s family will all move away (also following God’s call) and that there will be a big, gaping hole for someone. And then that someone gets to be his grandma who has always known her calling was to take care of her family. And now her grandbaby. That’s pretty beautiful I think.

I wonder if God really is that thoughtful? That careful? That mindful? Though I don’t believe He would ever force a certain life on us, I think He puts things in our souls that, if followed, can be a part of a very beautiful dream He had for us long before we even had it ourselves.

At least that is what I am thinking this morning.

Off to Nashville my friends.

Known

2009-09-01T07:30:00.003-05:00

My grandma used to say, "jEEEn-i-fer, slow down. You are slurring your words, grandma can't understand you."

As if the emphasis on the jEEEn would remind me that my name had an elegant, soft "e" in it instead of the southern-drawl "i" that I had given it.

Jenny not ginnee.

As if telling me to slow down would make me any easier to understand. The problem was quite simple people: my brain was moving faster than my mouth. I can't help it that I was born into brilliance.

See...

That is an example of a joke that most people will take seriously.

"Poor Jenny, she says she could never communicate because her brain was faster than her mouth. It must have been so tough on her being a child."

When in all reality, the line in italics is a joke. Sarcasm. My attempt at, or, more accurately, my first, blunt, un-rehearsed response to myself. I was not born into brilliance. I made an 820 on my SAT's. I just talked too fast because I was hyper and excited and later in the 90's they decided to call this ADHD and give kids drugs for this, but this was way before my time. So I was just hyper, excited, and distracted.

So the line about being born into brilliance? It was a joke.

On Feeling Misunderstood

I am feeling misunderstood lately.

By lately I mean the last 25 years or so.

I am almost 29.

The new jab in the band is, "That was a Jenny joke." Meaning: no one understands that was a joke, someone needs to explain it to the rest of the world, and yes, you probably offended someone in the process of making your sarcastic joke that no one else understood to be funny.

Yikes.

An example?

The babysitting blog.

I so love that each of you came to my rescue, told me to hold out hope for a good sitter, said you would never do the things I mentioned like stealing cookies, and told me of your own horror stories so I would not feel too bad. If I ever feel awful about life I will turn to each of you... you are bright spots of encouragement and love and I appreciate that about you guys. You make me smile.

But this time, in this past blog, I was ratting myself out about the horrible things I did during my years of babysitting (i.e. stealing cookies, Cheetos, writing emails, watching TV more closely than I watched the kids, and unfortunately following my all too nosey nose around the nooks and crannies of the house) and I was being dramatic as I poked fun at two slightly ding-bat, but otherwise normal 15- year-old girls who babysat my daughter the same way I babysat someone else's kid fifteen years ago.

The point of the blog for me was more: what goes around comes around.

The Rogue Blog

Don't get me wrong. The two hour early bed time, purplish legs the next morning, and 90 minutes of unadulterated TV for my four month old was not, umm, the best job that could have been done by any means. Still, she was alive, we were happy to have a night out, and once I wrote the dramatic re-telling of the evening to give myself a good laugh, I moved on. The blog which for me was funny and sarcastic took on a rogue life of its own.

Nearly a week later, I am still getting emails and calls from friends and family promising to come and babysit and apologizing for the awful experience. People are truly concerned.

Ryan says from now on I need to give disclaimers: This is supposed to be funny. This is spoken with sarcasm. This in tongue-in-cheek. This has been dramatized for the writers satisfaction. This is not really a serious issue.

As he told me about the so-called disclaimers I should be giving I tried to tell him, "But Ryan, it was funny. It was pointing out the circle of life. You are a bad babysitter, then you have to leave your kid with a bad babysitter, and then the karma comes back to bite you and you come home to no Milano cookies, and blah, blah, blah..."

All the while he kept talking about how I really needed to clarify myself better, a message I've consistently gotten from so many people, starting with my stinking grandma at age three.

Finally I snapped, "Ok fine, I get it, nobody understands me, I don't communicate the right way. Fine, just stop talking to me now."

Of course this is not a nice thing to say to your husband who is only, sincerely trying to help you clean up your un-rehearsed, rather rough-around-the-edges image.

He got quiet. I hurt his feelings. I did not mean to hurt his feelings. In reality, my feelings were being hurt. I was feeling awkward about myself and frustrated at my uncanny ability to make jokes that are not funny, to speak sarcasm that is taken as truth, to dramatize things that I believe are not as dramatic when the rest of the world experiences them, and to communicate in a language that sometimes, few understand.

He was trying to protect me, but in so doing he hurt my feelings. Upon which, I hurt his feelings and somehow at the end of that car ride... I was the bad guy.

Misunderstood

Does anyone know what I am talking about when I say it is such a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach to feel misunderstood? To feel like you need to clarify what you say or how you say it? To feel like you constantly need to explain yourself, your actions, your beliefs, your personality to the rest of the world?

It can be tiring to feel this way. I know it all too well. This game of trying to be less of me because it is simply more easy that way... the less "me-ish" I am, the less explaining I have to do to the rest of the world who does not get me.

But God Does...

get me, that is.

I truly believe this. It's not just spiritual mumbo-jumbo I am saying to make myself feel better. He really is the only one that truly gets me.

There are passages in the Bible, when if read correctly, present the intimacy between God and his people in very intimate, almost disturbingly passionate (maybe even sexual?), deep ways.

I mean, don't throw a red flag on me yet, we are called the bride of Christ. The Bible talks about the excitement the bride has for her groom, the passion they have for one another, the commitment, the intimacy, the wedding night... I don't think he's just talking beaver-cleaver separate twin beds here people.

I think God is saying "take the most intimate relationship you know on this earth: marriage, and that example of intimacy doesn't even scratch the surface of how intimately I know you, love you, and long to be known by you.

(Recap please? Why is marriage the most intimate? Because you are having SEX. There, let's just say it. You are intimately connected to each other through sex, kissing, making love, holding each other, walking around the house naked, whatever; and you are emotionally, spiritually connected in a battle to stay in love with each other, to keep the peace in your lives and homes, to grow into more loving, humble, mature, God-fearing, people-loving, community-building, church-building, child-raising, friend-raising, people. marriage is intimate. Being a bride or a groom is intimate. Severely, painfully, awkwardly, beautifully, intoxicatingly intimate. And, my Bible says I am the bride of Christ himself.)

Understood

God knows me intimately. He just does. He knows the hairs on my head and the thoughts in my cluttered, sporadic, un-funny head before they even have a chance to make their way out into the world. He knows my pride. My lust. My arrogance. My ignorance. He knows my passion. My unbridled love for people. My innocence. My joy. He knows exactly how many drawers I snooped through as a babysitter and he knows the secret longings of my heart that no one else can understand.

My husband loves me. Deeply. Incredibly. Passionately. He knows me.

My God knows me more. He gets me more. He loves me more. Deeply. Incredibly. Passionately.

And thank God for that. My husband could die. We could divorce. We could grow a part. Or we could love each other with every ounce of wisdom, trust, passion, and effort until the day we die... still, he will not know me the way the Lord knows me. He will not love me, accept me, forgive me, and delight in me the way my God, my creator, my savior does.

He is simply a Ryan. He cannot fully understand a Jenny. I cannot fully understand a Ryan. He can try. And he does. I can try, and I do. But I am known, he is known, truly, fully, known...

loved, accepted, and cared for by God himself. I am his bride. He is my groom. With him, I am never misunderstood. In fact, I am more fully known and understood than I myself can even know. God knows me better than I know myself. God loves me more than I love myself. He gets me. When no one else does, God gets me.

And He reminds me of that when I feel the weight of the world bearing down. When I hear the voices that say, "No one gets you Jenny. Just be quiet. Clarify yourself. Just don't tell jokes, you're not funny. Do you need a translator? What planet are you from? Slow down, grandma can't understand you. " The voices. God the voices are always there aren't they?

But then God is there too. He is here. Reminding me that he gets me. He knows me. With Him, there is no need for a translator. There is no need to slow down. There is no need to sort my thoughts out and make them pretty. He just takes me like this... because HE MADE ME LIKE THIS. How could he not get me? How could he not get you? He made you, friend.

And dangit, he laughs at my jokes.

New, Frightening Territory

2009-08-28T15:29:00.002-05:00

My timing is a bit off... I was trying to save this for the month of September... but here goes nothing...

This is my 300th blog post!

And the month of September will be my blog's 2 year birthday! And yes, we are going to have a party all month long because I love birthdays! I have free books, Cd's, cool t-shirts, and other fun things to give away. And perhaps if you are in Dallas, we will all meet for none other than... cupcakes and sprinkles of course.

Babysitters

So today I feel the need to publicly apologize to anyone I have ever babysat for.

I am sorry.

Of course you knew when there were Cheetos missing from your pantry and cookies missing from their packages. Of course you knew when a TV dinner or two disappeared. Of course you knew I watched MTV all night when you came home and it was still accidentally on in your bedroom. Oops, did I say your bedroom? I meant to say your living room.

Of course I never went in your bedroom and through your closets. I never ate your cookies and drank your soda on your big, plush, comfy king size bed while your children slept. I never made phone calls or scoured through your uber nice make-up. I never checked out your toilet reading materials or searched the last thing pulled up on your Internet. Your mortgage bills laying out? Of course I never let my eyes wonder all over that. Of course not.

I am having all kinds of babysitting flashbacks coupled with complete over-the-hill feelings as we just left Annie for the first time with hired help. (That's right Paul Allen, not the grandparents, but hired help, shameful I know.)

Did you know that for the mere price of about $30 bucks you can just leave your kid for the night? And now I realize how dangerous this is. I can only begin to imagine how many parents have been tempted to pay the $30 and skip town...

Last night was our first time to leave Annie Boo with a sitter. We paid our $30 bucks and left our kid with two girls who don't even have their driver's license yet. I mean, what if they needed to get to the hospital?

It wouldn't have mattered... they were trying to order pizza from the delivery store two towns over. Finding the hospital would be a long shot.

Of course these girls are responsible, great kids, and we love them. We really do. They are the best out there. But still, they are kids. And I am pretty sure they have not taken that fake baby doll they give you at the hospital during mom qualification classes and given it passionate CPR with all their hearts and souls like they were saving the last living whale in the ocean.

I have.

I can friggin save my baby with CPR if I have to. These girls couldn't even get the pizza delivered. It took four calls. Which "totally bummed them out because Zack was the one who answered the phone and we talked to him in our British accents the first time and when we had to call back three other times to figure out the address we totally had to keep using our English accents."

Oh good Lord I am sorry Annie.

I got these texts as the night progressed:

"If we were going to give someone the street name, what would that be?"

"Oh my gosh, your baby is a total TV junkie! Ha! That's so funny."

I get home and our baby is sound asleep. She went down at seven. Her bed time is nine. What... did she suddenly turn narcoleptic? I don't even want to think about how many secret diaries, computer files, and closets they could have looked through in this extra time. Or how many of my double chocolate Milano cookies they could have eaten during their spare time (OK, I'll be honest... I counted... they only had 5 of them).

The DVD that was supposed to be used in case of emotional emergencies... the 31 minute secret weapon miracle worker that mom hides for really bad occasions... yeah, that one... they played on repeat three times in a row. Good lord. 90 minutes of TV for a 4 month old? What about the books I laid out? The baby flash cards? The play mat? The little vibrating seat where I told them you can sit her in and you can make up voices and funny faces and teach Annie about people from different countries and rain forest animals? What about those things? Was she that emotionally beside herself?

This kid does not stand a chance when it comes to imagination and outside playtime. She is already hooked on the hard stuff. 90 minutes of TV in one night. I don't even want to know how this happened or what possessed them to play the video on repeat. Three times. Three stinkin times. I don't even want to know.

When I changed her out of her footy PJ's this morning her legs were purple-ish. I'm not kidding, a little veiny and purplish. She still had her socks on underneath the footies. Her toes were covered in sweat. Her little toes could've died in her sleep. Who does this? And, apparently, when a baby goes down two hours earlier than they are supposed to, this is reflected in their waking time. They go by hours, not the clock.

5:46 a.m. this morning she was smiling and ready to face the world. Crippled toes and all. I was ready to throw up. I don't do mornings. I don't think I do babysitters either. Next time I will stick her in my big purse and bring her into the pub where our friend's surprise birthday party was at. Purple legs or baby in a pub? I mean, I'm really not sure what is the worse of the two evils.

Ryan says the bar cannot be set very high for such nights out. The goal is just to make sure the baby stays alive. Well duh. But for ten dollars an hour and 5 cookies I expect her to know the alphabet and Presidents by the time I get home.

Instead, now she just knows my secret weapon that I have been saving for emotional maladies. Heck, she probably has it memorized by now.

All this to say...

Did people really trust me with their children?

Were they on drugs? Were they that desperate? Is it really legal to leave your baby with people who order their pizza with British accents and simply state the address as, "you know, the Oak apartment in Irving"?

Irving has 201,927 people living in it.

Never again people. Never again.

Tough Topic Tuesday

2009-08-25T08:48:00.005-05:00

When Annie woke up to eat at 2:22 a.m. this morning she flung her little hand across her body and it landed, fingers hooked, into my lips and mouth. She never opened her eyes. And she never moved her fingers. There they sat between my gums and lips and teeth. Every once in a while she would startle or start to move her hand around for comfort and then I felt those little fingers on my tongue. I felt like a cat.

I was pretty sure my bad breath and high acidic saliva mouth could not be good for her delicate baby skin, but I couldn't bring myself to retrieve her fingers. Then I felt slightly creepy. Who gets this much pleasure out of having their babies fingers and hand awkwardly shoved into their mouth? Still, if she had not declared a retreat, I would have stayed that way all night and woken up this morning with her whole hand in my my mouth and been very happy about it. (And this reminds me of when I was newly married. I tried very hard to fall asleep holding Ryan's pinky and to wake up in the same position the next morning... holding pinkies. This of course did not work, but in my young-in-love-mind, this was a dream worth chasing. Oh the days when marriage was that simple...)

She devoured four ounces of milk and when she was done, she burrowed down into my chest and smiled and purred her way back to sleep. I rocked her for thirty more minutes just so I could be with her, could feel her, could hold her close to me.

This was one of the best moments of my life. Simple. Pure. Beautiful. Divine.

***

I think we have taken what was supposed to be rather simple, pure, beautiful, and divine and we have complicated, darkened, tarnished, and broken it: God, that is. More specifically, God's church.

The song, What Do I Know of Holy, does not just resonate with you Rebecca, or with you Renee, or with the few others who have posted comments about the song on this forum... but rather it has resonated with so many, many people in so many parts of the world. I believe this song works because people long to know and love God in a deeper way than our churches and religious traditions are giving them an opportunity to do so through. People are tired of religion.

This song says, don't give me God in a box; give me the Holy of Holies, the Creator, the unknowable, unfathomable Savior whom angels worship and rocks cry out to, who made the ocean and knows how many grains of sand are on its beaches, who made possible a way for all things to be redeemed and made new, who loves infinitely. I want that.

***

The shortfalls of religion and the church have been written on and discussed ad nauseum. Books abound on why people love God but hate the church; why the church is ineffective, intolerant, inefficient, and incongruent with the life of Jesus.

So you think things would be changing. And yet, I find that many of the churches we visit (over 100 different churches a year) are still spitting out the same washed up, empty, judgemental, boxey, passionless messages and programs. Aaagghhh. The word "program" in connection with church makes me want to pull my hair out. (Cause programs for "church members" was exactly what Jesus was all about, huh?)

***

Some examples? For the first time ever I actually heard a sermon recently that digressed into telling the mainly 7th-9th grade audience that our country was a short step away from socialism. Which he then compared to communism. This was preceded by telling the students how many of their friends and future husbands and wives had been murdered by abortion during the years they were born. This political tirade given by a college president to a group of vulnerable students was a tragic use of power in the pulpit. Instead of teaching scripture, encouraging students to draw near to God, to learn from the life and words of Jesus, or helping them practically understand how any of those things can look in their everyday lives... he used God's house to push his political agenda.

Follow me from that night in an Independent Baptist church in Texas to a recent night in Iowa when I had dinner with three girls who were all members of Christian Reformed, Lutheran, and Episcopalian denominations. After talking for a while about girl things, I asked them to tell me about their churches. What are they like? How do they shape your lives? What do the worship and sermons mean to you each week?

They looked at me like I was asking them to find the square root of 2,345,768 (And by the way, I have no idea if there is a square root for that. I have no idea how to find square roots. I have no idea what a square root is.).

So I asked them a more simple question, "Well then, why do you go to church?"

Their answer? Because we always have. I finally got them to acknowledge that the best part of church for them was the community, the people who had been a part of their lives since the nursery. And while I was happy they had found love and joy in the community there, I was heartbroken that for them, church was a community center; not a place where they fell more in love with Jesus, were drawn closer to God, or developed in any way spiritually. No wonder their faces were blank during worship and they barely moved their mouths to sing.

Those are two extreme examples.

***

The more common examples? We led worship at a more traditional church recently and eight people got up and left. Too loud? I'm a female worship leader? They weren't interested in that style of music? I'm not sure. But this was not what they wanted... so they left. At least they were honest. The other several hundred people who were there just stared at us, never worshipping themselves, but apparently just taking in a nice show.

And we run into this all the time. The church should break into Hollywood... I've never seen so many good actors in my life. So many people faking it. Going through the motions. Dead in the pews. And worse, tepidly mildewed and green around the edges of their souls. Not quite rotten, not nearly alive, just a murky, still water infested with mosquitoes. Yikes. Why go to church people??? Stay at home. Sleep in. Go for a nice run in the park and end up at a cool coffee shop and read the Sunday morning newspaper. Sometimes I think the best thing for a lot of churches would be a freak tornado that comes down only to take the walls of the building away... because then what? Would anyone choose to rebuild?

Church is supposed to be about God. And community. But mostly a group of people in love with Christ first, passionately chasing after a new way of living, finding a new way to be human, and then stumbling into a beautiful community of other people who are following the same way.

What we all to often have are social and political clubs, that at best, function like fun-loving senior centers and inclusive PTA's and fraternities who sometimes have members who sometimes have moments in God's presence while sometimes attending their events.

***

Ok, ok. I'll let up before some of you go getting too pessimistic and tell your pastor that the Christian singer told you to quit church. There are three positives that readily come to mind when I think of the condition of the church.

One. This is nothing new. "Church" "religion" and groups of Christ followers have been screwing up for years. The Israelites. The Catholic crusades. The Christians who stood by and participated in the Holocaust. The TV evangelists. The materialistically, exclusive churches in the rich suburbs. And the bigoted, hateful churches of the south. And the thousands of churches and denominations (in all corners of the world) living between the extremes who blithely exist simply because... you know, that's what they've always done. Everyone is Greek Orthodox. Everyone is Catholic. Everyone goes to community group. Everyone sits through communion. Everyone goes to church camp at least once.

Whether it is the church functioning as the murderers or as the funeral home, I take hope in the fact that we are not the first generation to reduce God's community of followers to such low lows. History repeats itself.

Second positive I see? History does not have to repeat itself.

Third positive I see? Beyond the churches that are doing harm or doing nothing; there is another kind of church. I have seen it. With my own eyes. I have seen it in California. I saw it in the Netherlands. I have seen it in Chicago. I saw it once in an amazing worship service in Slovakia. My friends have seen it in Congo. And it is happening in small churches and communities across the country. I see it brewing in my own church. There is a movement of people, faith communities, cities, even some nations who are passionately rejecting religion for the sake of religion and desperately seeking God's face.

There are bands like the Parachute Band from New Zealand who are not interested in being on the radio (even though they are incredibly talented, marketable, guys who could make a lot of money off of it) but instead are genuinely seeking to introduce God and worship to as many people as possible.

LifeTeen through the Catholic church who are, in so many inventive ways, leading students into developing their own meaningful relationships with Christ.

The Emergent Village, The Simple Way, Rob Bell, Beth Moore, Rick Warren... the list goes on and on. The church universal has glimmers of authentic Christ-centered passion, beauty, and hope. Perhaps more than the church has ever had.

***

Rick Warren says this about the church on his website:

"The Church is everywhere in the world.
There are villages that have little else,
but they do have a church."

And he continues, "The Church is the most magnificent concept ever created. It has survived persistent abuse, horrifying persecution, and widespread neglect. Yet despite its faults (due to our sinfulness), it is still God’s chosen instrument of blessing and has been for 2,000 years.

The Church will last for eternity, and because it is God’s instrument for ministry here on Earth, it is truly the greatest force on the face of the Earth. That’s why I believe tackling the world’s biggest problems – the giants of spiritual lostness, egocentric leadership, poverty, disease, and ignorance – can only be done through the Church."

Simple. Pure. Beautiful. Divine.

Whether your church has ten people or ten thousand... it is God's instrument. To go in and out of a "church building" each week without experiencing God (sometimes without even trying to or even caring whether we do), without engaging with the Holy of Holies, without connecting and journeying with others on a personal, meaningful, spiritual level (not just: how was your week, what do you think about the Cowboys? pray for my dog), and without passionately aspiring to God beyond the walls, color, creed, and safety of our own churches to be an agent of change in the world is a tragic misuse of God's house. Tragic.

And I see it all too often.

***

So my question today on Tough Topic Tuesday is to... Honestly evaluate your chosen place of worship. Your church.

Shane Claiborne says in his book The Irresistible Revolution that too many people complain about the church yet do nothing to fix it. So he endeavored to stop complaining and start acting. That left him homeless, on the streets, living with tons of other people, sharing his food, his car, his bed, his health insurance, and now he has written a book about it all and continues to be a part of the change that I believe God so desperately wants to see: Christians who actually have passion for Him.

So the real question I pose for myself and for you today is this... what are we doing to fix it? Not the staff, not the politics, not the carpet, the worship style, or the gossiping divas that the church would be so much better without.

No.

What are we doing to be a part of, to encourage, to initiate, to demand, to usher in the spiritual hunger and thirst for Christ himself in our churches?

And if we are doing nothing to this end, if you are doing nothing to this end... then why go?

I Love the Netherlands

2009-08-24T06:31:00.007-05:00

Cupcakes in Amsterdam? Yes! Amazing cupcakes made by Dan the Cookie Man. If you are ever in the area, you must track down this quaint little cupcake and cookie oasis for the fluffiest butter cream frosting in the world! If you read this Dan... so nice to meet you. Thanks for the great little cupcake.

Walking the streets of Amsterdam.

Cafe picture. One of about ten thousand cafes. And every cafe serves beer. And they are not kidding around in this place. People are drinking the beer by about, um, 10 a.m. I opted out of beer and went straight for the little tiny dutch apple pancakes. The best little things I have ever eaten.

Traffic Jam?

Twice a year the city shuts down one of the canals, builds a huge stage on the water, and puts on a free concert by the Amsterdam Symphony and Orchestra. We just happened to be in town on that one Saturday night. Amazing timing. All the boats jam in for an up close encounter and the rest of the concert-goers pack in the streets and sidewalks with blankets, wine, cheese, and pastries. When the music started everyone was quiet. Respectful. When the concert was over I don't think I saw any litter anywhere. And I never once felt like I might get killed by a thug. Quite the different experience than a big, free, city-wide Dallas event. It was a perfect night.

My brother-n-law Riley and his fiance Claire met us for a few days. Claire is currently serving with the Peace Corp in Ukraine, just had her first article published in the Wall Street Journal, and loves Mexican food as much as I do. I'm not sure about Riley, but Claire and I were made for each other! And yes, those are tortilla chips. And yes, we did find amazing Mexican food in Amsterdam.

Brothers.

The best festival we have ever played at! Thank you so much Flevo Festival for having us as your guests. These pics were taken by Henk-Jan van der Klis... thanks so much for the amazing photos.

We had such a wonderful time with our new Dutch friends! Seriously these are fun-loving, music-loving, genuinely lovely people and we were so glad to make new friends and fans. There are thoughts and stories to come, but for now, hope you enjoy the pics. I cannot wait to get home and see my little squirrel... only ten more hours.

Personal Q&A

2009-08-20T07:51:00.002-05:00

From Helen: Where did Pam get the HAT!? What is your favorite song on the radio right now?  What is your all time favorite movie?

Pam got the hat at a boutique in DC. The hat almost lost its life in the dryer last night but survived with only a few bumps and bruises. Now, the hat is on my head in the Heathrow International Airport in London, England. Favorite song on the radio right now would have to be the theme song for the sports radio station that I listen to. At the start of football season, I don’t listen to much music. ☺ Finally, I have three all time favorite movies. It’s A Wonderful Life. Field of Dreams. And Apollo 13. And Good Will Hunting. OK, I have four favorite movies. I don’t really watch a lot of movies, but those are flicks I have watched over and over and over again. They never get old. I always cry through all four of them. Awe. Makes me happy just thinking about them.

From Meagan Joye: So from one Texas girl to another- Dallas Cowboys= Superbowl, Yes??

Dear Meagan Joye, I wish. The Cowboys will go to the Superbowl again one day, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen this year. All the same, I will dress Annie in her cowboys uniform before every game for good luck!

From Vulnerable Silence: Did you actually attend Fuge Camp growing up?

Yep, I actually went to Fuge camps and loved them. Though I have to confess I was not the best camper. My mom was my youth pastor growing up and every year she’d take about 200 of us to camp and lay down the law: no camp hook-ups. Well, one year I walked into her room, told her that I had fallen in love with a boy four years older than me from a different state, and informed her that my week’s mission was to kiss him. Let’s just say I broke camp rules that year.

Do you have a Facebook or Myspace?

No Facebook. No Myspace. And just barely on Twitter. I’m what you call an old foggie. Just e-mail and phone for me. And let’s be honest, I’m about 200 e-mails behind. So that’s not quite reliable either. I put a great deal of time into my friends, church, and family when I am home. Between that and being on the road, I don’t have much time for anything else. And it’s a good thing. I might become obsessed with eavesdropping on people’s lives. Or I might track down some of the cheerleaders who were terribly hateful to me in high school and launch smear campaigns. See, I am simply not mature enough to enter Cyberworld. I'm keepin it old school.

From hm347349: What are some of your favorite bands?  

I LOVE The Fray, Mat Kearney, Augustana, U2, Kanye West, Toby Mac, Robby Seay Band, Justin Timberlake, and Phil Wickham. When I listen to girl singers it’s usually R&B. Alicia Keys. Natasha Beddingfield. The Sister Act soundtrack! Heck Yea Branflake! And as strange and backwards as it may sound, I’m really not that into music. If I get new music it’s because the guys force it upon me. Otherwise, I am content to listen to the same old songs I love over and over again. On average, I spend $15 a year on music. Yikes. Don’t tell anyone.

From Shae and Ashley: How did you and Ryan meet? What did you do for your first date?

My husband and I met at the beginning of my sophomore year in college. I was on a dating hiatus. I had just gotten out of a relationship with the guy I was convinced I was going to marry. He broke up with me and I was heart broken. I knew I needed a break from men. My sophomore year was to be dedicated to my studies (yeah, right) and making better girlfriends. Then I met Ryan. He had these big baby blue eyes. I wasn’t interested. I met him twice but never could remember his name; but I remembered his eyes. We were in an organization together and ended up talking all night at a lock-in. He says he knew that night he wanted to marry me. It took me much, much longer. He said he was attracted to me because I was the only girl, or person for that matter, that went back for seconds… and then thirds. It was homemade chicken spaghetti y’all. What college kid doesn’t devour that?

Apparently I ate more than any girl he had ever seen and this was cute. Great, that's exactly the reason you want to be noticed. Not… Oh, she’s beautiful. Oh, she’s funny. Oh, she is stunning. Oh, she's kind. But: Dang, that girl eats a lot.

Anyways, after three plates of spaghetti and hours of talking he asked me to go on a date with him the next morning. And after our first date, I turned him down for a second date.

He was cute, but those blue eyes were too intense for me. I needed time to myself. He was not a part of my plan. I wasn’t sure what my plan was, but he wasn’t in it. But he persisted. Showed up at the apartment one day with soup when I was sick. Waited around after some of my classes. Called every few day to see what I was doing… you know the bit, and pretty soon I was having to come up with more and more lies about why I couldn’t see him. And then, well, then he broke me. I had no more good reasons to tell him no, so I said yes. By January we were madly in love. We got engaged the next Christmas (which is also when we went to Nashville to make our first album). And we got married that summer. August 10th. We just celebrated our seven-year anniversary. The rest is history or history in the making I suppose.

At the end of the day...

2009-08-18T22:43:00.003-05:00

The only pic I really have of the "hair-cut." I did them layers all by myself...golly.

That's my kid laid out on the couch in a random Starbucks in Indianapolis.

This is me laid out in the back seat of the car somewhere random in Indianapolis. Thanks babe. Flattering, really.

And honestly, that sort of sums up my life the last few days. Utter exhaustion. There's really no need to say more. To expound on the airports, the shows, the sweltering 99 degree weather and the melty baby, the car rides, van rides, the three outfits lost to poop (not mine... hers, I promise), the 12 a.m. fire alarm that sent me, the baby, and apparently some sort of senior citizens reunion out of the hotel and into the parking lot in our pj's, the lost purse, the frantic search through every shopping cart in the Target parking lot first thing this morning, the ensuing "why do you lose things fight" with my husband (as if I made a conscious decision, "I think I will leave my purse today, I am so tired of it, be lost purse! Be lost!") the tears, the four month old baby shots and the baby who looked at me like I sold her on the black market, and the purse, that, yea... was hanging on the back of the kitchen table chair when I got home.

There is no need to go there. Oh, and did I mention that I leave for Amsterdam tomorrow? She only thinks I betrayed her today, acting all happy when I knew that she was about to have six needles shoved into her legs. Wait until I leave her with grandma and then not show up for another five days.

I left her with grandma in the bookstore for five minutes and this is the conversation I come back to:

That's right! That monkey looks like my uncle Bernie. Yes! My uncle Bernie! You can't meet him cause he's dead. Yep, he's dead. Poor uncle Bernie. He was a simple man. He stepped out in front of a bus. But, yep, he looked just like this monkey. Yes he did!

Annie was literally laughing out loud.

Earlier in the day I happened upon this conversation:

No, we don't kill whales. No we don't! We love whales. We ride whales! Yes we do! We ride whales. And you can ride whales too. Like the little girl who was a whale rider. She wasn't a good for nothing girl like her dad said. No she wasn't. She was a whale rider. And you can be an Annie whale rider. You can ride whales all around the world.

I mean, good Lord, who knows what stories she might hear before I get home?

***

So Grandma is here from Albuquerque. I am not packed yet. And I feel frazzled. Not stressed. But frazzled. When you are stressed you have the emotional capability of knowing that there are things you need to get done. When you are frazzled you can't really even wrap your mind around what needs to be done next. I sort of feel like I have been hit by a train. One of those really fast trains that they make in Japan.

And I know Annie will be fine. Happy. Perfect. And well-fed! She won't even mention it in therapy twenty years from now. But I am convinced it is terrible. I think it is just terrible for me. Oh the angst of having a little person that you call your own.

***

Totally tubular tough topic Tuesday has not been abandoned. Never fear. I've decided this is an every other week segment. Uses a lot of brain juice. Brain juice, upon college graduation, is rationed. Twice a month. That sounds about right.

***

Ever the procrastinator. The girl who freezes under pressure and revolts against deadlines. Suffering from a serious disease of timely follow-through... I still plan on answering all of the questions you asked.

In the tumble and swirl of the last few days there have been harder things too. Deeper things. If you peel back a few layers you would see anger. Loneliness. A serious case of envy. Arguing with Ryan. Exhaustion. Inadequacy. A bit of emptiness.

This made me think of the question that Cavelle asked a few weeks ago.

I've been struggling lately with my faith, just ready to give up and let go. I'm literally hanging on by a thread. How do you, hold on to your faith, when there are so many situations being thrown at you, and you don't know what to do?

Oh sweet girl. If I could just give you a hug. You are not alone. We all hang on by a thread from time to time. Literally just hanging there, hoping a wind will brush by and blow us off so we don't have to fight anymore, so we don't have to keep hanging on by the tips of our fingernails.

So what do you do?

You let go.

You don't hold onto your faith, your faith holds on to you.

Let me be more clear. You do not hold onto God. God holds onto you.

So you can let go now.

I think the point of our struggles is not that we are strong enough to fight and survive alone. It's not a test of our faith to see if we have the willpower to chose God when everything in this world screams at us to chose despair, bitterness, anger, loneliness, and disbelief. Struggles are not a cruel experiment to see if you can keep holding on. Struggles illuminate the fact that we cannot hold on.

We let go. And it is there, in our weakness, brokenness, exhaustion, and pain that God is ever present. That Jesus says give me your burdens and I will simply give you peace in return. It is there, Andrea, that the words of scripture most speak to me.

Fear not, I have redeemed you and I have called you by name. When you walk through the waters, I will be with you. When you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned. Isaiah 43.

You will not be alone, you will not drown, you will not be burned. Why? Because you held on for dear life? Because somehow you were able to make it yourself in the midst of your pain? No. Because you have been redeemed by a God who knows you, loves you, and basically says... let go. Because He says, when the fire hits, I will be there to shield you. When the water is raging around you and you are holding onto the branch for dear life and it snaps...

You will not drown. There will be a life raft.

Not because you made it but because God values you, loves you, and cares so deeply for you, for me, for us that He has never abandoned humanity. He is with us. (Psalms 139. Another favorite).

Of course we fight. You cannot give up. I cannot give up. As much as I wanted to just get in a car today and drive to a beautiful beach in Mexico, I could not.

I have met many people with life stories that are so painful they seem like pages out of a fiction book. They simply don't compare to my exhaustion, lost purse, and temporary marital squabbles. Yet, these people surprise me with their endurance. They fight. They don't quit. They wake up each morning and breath and get out of bed and choose life. Time and time again they endure because they know at the end of the day, when they can no longer fight, can no longer keep it together, can longer hang on, they know...

Someone is there to catch them.

They let go. And the mysterious presence of God finds them, surrounds them, holds them up, and brings peace into their despair.

***

Yesterday God held me up. I was in the prayer room at my church and before I knew it, I was sound asleep. I woke up knowing that those moments of rest were given to me. My fingers finally grew tired, they let go, and then there I was... being cared for.

It has happened today too. Through people. Through my mom. Through another mysterious nap. Through a song.

God is hear. Calling me to lay down the anger. To rest. Giving me peace where my patience has worn thin. Surrounding me with love when I am quite unlovable. And helping me surrender my struggle for survival. He is near. And now, at 12:10 when I will finally say good-bye to this long, trying day, I can sleep in peace because I know that on my own today would've sent me over the edge. But I was not on my own. Neither will I be tomorrow. After the anger, the temper, the frustration, the exhaustion, the _________ it's almost like I heard a voice.

Are you done yet Child? Good. Now let go of it. Let's start again. And I did.

Today I...

2009-08-13T23:42:00.004-05:00

Cut my own hair with my arts-n-crafts scissors. Yeah...I took off a little more than I intended. And no, I have no idea how to cut hair. And yes, I am celebrating the recession by learning. And no, this time did not go so well. And yes, I believe that practice will make perfect... that is if Ryan doesn't kill me first. He thinks my hair-cutting-episodes are, and I quote: disaster.

Taught Annie Boo how to sit up.

Almost.

I also dressed her in these pajamas that are entirely too big for her because I can no longer resist. They are so stinking cute. And really, why should I have to suffer because my 4-month-old, eleven pound baby does not fit into any of her 4-month-old clothes? Is it my fault she is so tiny that most women utter a small gasp when they find out she is not an infant? And why do they do this gaspy thing? She is wide eyed and bushy tailed. What kind of weird infant is alert and babbling? Have they had real babies? Of course she's not a newborn. And don't they know their comments freak me out? What is wrong with your baby??? She is freakishly small!

But, do not be concerned. I took her to the doctor two weeks ago and when she asked me why we came in, I said, "well, look at her... there's something not right." To which she replied, "She's just petite, you tell all those other moms their babies are just big headed." Then she tried to leave the room, as if that were all I needed to hear. Seriously? That's something my mom would say after a bully hurt my feelings. That is not medical. I want big words and worst case scenarios. I want the red book medical diagnosis. I have already paid my $25 co-pay. I want $25 worth of work done.

So I had her inspect everything.

Her ears. Her nose. The strange white-ish lump on her ribs. The suspiciously soft spot on her head. Her teeth or lack there-of. And her spine. It feels lopsided to me.

***

Today I worked on song lyrics for the new album. We sat down with two songs that were completely written and made some small tweaks. It took five hours. Five hours. I wanted to poke my eyeballs out. Travis and Ryan Gregg were teetering on the edge of a mental break-down. And then, when we were stuck on one line, one word, one terrible, pesky little word... we saw an ant crawl into my computer. Then another. And another.

The guys were convinced I was hiding food in my lap or perhaps, in my computer. They went on with this little joke for quite a while. Comparing me to the splunky junior high kid that hides a nasty stash of Cheetos, Little Debbies, and a Mountain Dew in their sleeping bag to eat after "lights out." I am a lady. Not cookie monster. They did not agree.

Then I saw the ants crawling on Ryan's computer. I am sure this is where they originated. I called him a germ. Ryan, that is, not the ants. Germ. That's what I called him the rest of the day. We talked about how we hated ants and wondered what purpose they serve. Took a 10 minute sunshine break. And then pressed on... for two more hours.

***

So glad you guys are fans of Tough Topic Tuesdays. I loved reading your responses... and I am already working on next week. If you haven't taken a minute to read people's thoughts, I encourage you to do so. It's like going to school. For free. I already feel smarter. Really. This is great. Happy Thursday.

Tough Topic Tuesday

2009-08-11T22:09:00.003-05:00

Tough Topic Tuesday- "Laughing With"

I love this song. I first heard it playing in the halls of my church a few weeks ago. The words are haunting. Regina Spektor has always incorporated scriptural and spiritual themes throughout her music, but she never tells you to believe one way or the other; instead I think her art begs the listeners to think for themselves. And this song definitely stirred up the think tank.

When I found the song on YouTube I noticed it had been viewed nearly 500,000 times (denoting that whether you like her or the song, it is culturally relevant, she is impacting people one way or the other) and there were already well over 3,000 comments. A debate was broiling. What does the song mean? Is it for Christians? Is it for Atheists? Can it be for both? What does it mean that we are all laughing with God? What does it say about God’s character? What does it say about humanity? You can read some of their comments below.

Of course there are always people who want to pick a fight or prove a point, but the vast majority of comments seemed well thought out. And the comments intrigued me. The more I read, the more engrossed I got. Page after page I read people’s thoughts on God, religion, and humanity. I felt like an audience member for a Dr. Phil taping. I felt like a sociologist doing cross-cultural research. Then, slowly, I felt like a believer in Jesus who was simply eavesdropping on a conversation someone was having about me. I was listening in as someone talked about me. About my savior. About my way of life.

For a moment I was shell-shocked. I forget that my beliefs are quite alien and foreign. I forget that not everyone believes the way I believe. I forget that many people have many reasons to denounce that which I have committed myself to. I, the lover of diversity and freedom of choice, was momentarily overwhelmed by how detached from reality I have really become. I’ve been walking around with my head in the clouds; there is a huge, huge world out there.

If you have been raised in an evangelical background, like myself, you were taught that people were either “Saved” or “Unsaved.” Then we got politically correct and decided that it was a slap in the face to tell someone they were “lost” or unsaved, so we changed it to “seekers.” Now, I am not sure what the PC term is, but I know this, if I were on the other side of things, the only label I would want would be human, friend, or person. Being known as unsaved or lost would inherently mean that I was a project to those around me, a thing to be converted, or an object to be won and changed.

And while I love that God has called me to be a part of His love and work in the world, it is He who labels, He who changes, He who authors true conversion… if He does that through me because I have been a friend, because I have loved, because I have been honest and real with those around me, then may it be so. But I can only confess that He alone knows a man’s heart and truly saves that which is lost, broken, and hurting.

I do pray for sensitivity. Not because I am not brave enough or bold enough to share what God has done in my life. Not because I am ashamed of what I believe. Not because I believe that it is wrong to share my beliefs… I choose sensitivity because a person’s faith, their spirituality, and the messy business of knowing and following Christ is quite the journey. In my experience it’s not as easy as a simple prayer and I certainly did not choose to follow Christ out of the fear of hell. A pamphlet or “track” would not have done the trick, nor would a strange person walking up to me in the mall asking private questions about my soul. Forcing God on people has clearly not worked.

So my question today is: In a world full of real people, with real beliefs, real pain, real joy, real life… what relevant role can a Christian play in the spiritual journey of another human?

That’s the sort of question that I must wrestle with. Today I am reminded, not everyone speaks my language.

“Laughing With” YouTube Comments:
(please note: UNCENSORED comments)

"I understand what Epowerboy means when he says he doesn't want to be saved. I think he means he doesn't need to be saved because there is nothing to be saved from. Saved from sin? A sin is a sin only if you believe in those sins. They mean nothing to a non-believer. Many people lead good lives without the need for a God or religious guidelines."

"This song is powerful. Its meaning is so deep because it's not trying to tell you a specific answer about who God is, but simply pointing out something all of us can completely agree with and understand: that we as humans are beings of such limited scope and control over our circumstances. There are times in our lives when we are humbled by the vastness of creation -- by it's beauty and its sorrow. And this tells us something about The Creator."

"I laugh at all those moments with the mention of gods. I'm facing down the barrel of a shortened life of continued levels of pain, and I am laughing right now at this song, at the idea of gods, right at this moment. Just because something feels nice, doesn't make it any less a delusional idea. Just because something is comforting, doesn't make it true. It would be nice if clouds were made of ice cream too, but so what? It's childish, it's wishful thinking. It's just sad."

"In reference to the person who said, “All you idiots who don’t believe are going to hell.” A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another," John 13: 34-35. If you, yourself, believe you are a Christian you would present such a statement with more grace. You should be ashamed of the way you said this; Christ would not have done so. Grow up, read your Bible."

"This song is a cheap shot to all the people who find religion in desperation. It would be like making a song about how No one thanks god when their child is born with a disability. Regina has one thing right though - God really isn't funny because A - he doesn't exist, and B - if by some chance he did exist and all the things attributed to him were true, he'd be the most sinister bastard in the Universe."

"I don't see this song as anti-religious at all. Half is the old, "There are no atheists in foxholes," idea, which I agree with. The other half is a comment on the kind of shallow (and yes, laughable) faith that reduces God to Jiminy Cricket, a Genie and Santa Claus. Not all Christians see God so small, or simplistically, but the ones who do will likely find the song offensive. Faith and belief are complex. This song illustrates that beautifully. I was simultaneously moved and convicted by it."

"I think this song is beautiful satire at the idea that while a person whom is going thro a traumatic moment may ask "God, why me?" and not even have to believe in any god at all; and yet, when things are working fine or one is better off, the idea of a being controlling fate may become a humorous reflection. In the end, though, we're all laughing at our helplessness, whether we believe or not. I don't believe, just for the record."

Something New Is Brewing...

2009-08-11T16:18:00.004-05:00

Thank you for the encouragement. I had no idea there were so many blurkers out there! It really is an honor to be your friend, to speak into your lives, and to listen to your thoughts in response. It gives me great joy and I am glad it brings a smile to your face too. Just so you know, I have not forgotten about answering your questions or filling you in on Elda (thank you for the gift card Eileen in California), they are both coming.

Over the next few weeks I am going to be changing up, enhancing if you will, this little blog-o-home. Nothing drastic, same content, just some things I've been diddle-daddling with in my head. Some sprucing up. Spring cleaning? Fall tidying? The once-a-year re-arranging of the furniture (You know. When you feel utterly bored with your home and can't afford to buy anything new so you just re-arrange every little thing, bask in its newness for a day, and then decide the next day that it is utterly awful but you have no energy to go back and fix the disaster that came from your discontentedness?). Whatever you want to call it, something new is coming. Even if I just change the colors up a bit!

Ryan has decided I must start a blog-podcast. Apparently I am dramatic. I don't think that's a very nice thing to tell someone. All the same, I'm dramatic and he says that sometimes the "italics" just don't capture the way I say it out loud to him. So, if you are truly bored or on the run... in the very near future, you will be able to listen to some of the blogs through a podcast. Don't get too excited. I once had a sixth grade boy find me after worship only to say, "Wow. You sound like a girl on stage, but you sort of have a man's voice off stage." Oh. Beautiful, stupid children.

And I have decided it's time for me to start thinking again. Yes, my brain has been on the back-burner as my mom skills have been developing themselves. I love history. I love politics. I love international affairs. I love human diversity whether it comes in the form of religion, culture, ethnicity, or whether you are a "cat" person or "dog" person; a glass half-full or half-empty gal, or a "red" or "blue" state person. I love the things that make us different. And I highly value the freedom we have as Americans to make our own choices, think our own thoughts, and freely discourse with those around us on any subject matter without fear of repercussion.

To that end, today I am introducing a new segment on the blog... Tough Topic Tuesdays.

Hot topics if you will. Watch-out Tuesdays, I'm putting on my thinking cap.

From religion to quotes, spirituality to politics, current events to global problems, Tuesday will be the day to go a bit deeper. My only request? Speak freely in the comment section, but do so without hate. Agree. Disagree. Or just be a blurker :) But be respectful... lashing out is no way to make a point.

So, without further ado, I give you Tough Topic Tuesdays. I look forward to hearing what you think.