Perspective

I saw a man
Who lost his son tonight,
Who held his wife in his arms
And cried for a child who never took a first breath,
And my too tight jeans
And my stringy hair
And my un-pedicured heels
And my daughter who shrieks too loudly
And my baby who's still nursing
And my husband who's still limping
And my lawn that needs watering
And my million stupid grumblings
Make me sick.
My God when did I lose sight of my miracles?
Father, how could I let go of the wonder I felt
When I saw my baby smile for the first time?
Lord, why did I ever forget the sight of my
Little girl when she was first placed in my arms.
How dare I behave in any way contrary to
Utter jubilation
And gratitude
And awe.
Father God help me.

Exhausting

My goodness it's difficult keeping up with you--
So incredibly enlightened
So intrinsically good.
I find it exhausting to be constantly wrong
Flawed
Sinful
My goodness if I were meant to be so demure
So submissive
So kind
So humble
So pure
So loving,
Then why was I created so contrarily!

I resent that crisp green line

On my painful, hellish run this morning I saw a man in the distance cutting his grass. It had me thinking about our lawn, and how I have to cut the grass because Lee still is unable to walk, and how I wish the lawn would just get miraculously weed-eated and cut. Instead of the reality of ME having to push the lawn mower later today after this exhausting run.....

All this was running through my mind, as I approached the working man. I noticed him pushing the lawnmower along a narrow strip of grass that stretched between his lawn and his neighbor's. But then he did something that shocked me....he stopped....

He stopped about 3 feet short---the 3 feet that fell into his neighbor's property. It would have taken exactly two strides of his feet to complete that strip of grass, practically the exact width of his lawnmower. Instead, he felt the need to leave a very precise, crisp green line between their lawns.

Credit: CAST

And then I started thinking These Yankees up here in North Carolina are so damn strange! I remember my dad cutting this little square of grass that bordered our lawn and our neighbor's driveway. It was just an unspoken rule that whoever was cutting his grass would cut that little square too. Not just cut one side and leave the other 5 inches longer.  What is that!??!?

That's when I turned the corner running toward my house, and I noticed the crisp line between the side of my house and that of my neighbor's.

Right now that I'm close to PAYING cash for someone to cut my grass, that strip of lawn bitterly mocked me. Lee had been pestering me all week to call someone to cut the lawn, but I couldn't seem to bring myself to take out the $50. So of course, I kept putting it off, and I resigned to the fact that I'm going to be cutting it again. It's super long and it's wet because of the non-stop rains that have visited us almost daily for the better part of a week.

And at that moment I remember thinking, I resent Lee's ankle, and I resent my neighbor, and I resent that crisp green line. 

Just put a magnet on it

My husband doesn't fix things around the house. He's not handy whatsoever, and if you were to ask him about it, he would say that he works with a different type of tool set.

He's a software engineer, and if you need some complex application that can manage 1232345 functions per second, he's your man. But ask him to fix a doorknob, and he's calling Andy Handyman stat.

I'm okay with that because I happen to be handy (at least handier than him), and I learned it from my dad.

As a little girl, I would help my dad build sheds and fences, help him fix the car, or some general plumbing job--always marveling at how easily he calculated all the measurements and angles. My dad just knew how things went together--how they worked. It was something that mesmerized me about my dad, and to be honest, it still does.

So the other day I give him a call. I want to install a cat door and needed a drill and saw to get the job done, and the best man to help me in the purchasing process is definitely my dad. Of course his mind goes beyond big pictures and straight down to the nitty gritty. He asks me how long the blades on the drills are, how thick the door is, he asks what the door looks like and how many volts the drill is, and then he asks what I believe he thought to be a fundamental question, What kind of door is it?

Huh?

Is it metal or wood?

I don't know. I tell him. How would I find that out? 

Then he said it. 6  simple words that blew my mind...

Put a magnet on it.

And I ran downstairs and grabbed a magnet off the frige, walked over to the door and snap! The magnet practically flew out of my grasp to attach itself to my METAL door.

Well there ya go, he tells me... You'll need to use the metal blades on the saw. 

And just like that the crisis is averted.

My dad has this fantastic way of making things so simple. You wonder to yourself, "Why didn't I think of that!?!?" And I wish I had that in me. I remember as a kid him always telling me "Make it easy on yourself."
It's like he always thought I went about things in the hardest, most inefficient way possible. Make it easy on yourself, daughter.

He once told me this was his favorite song, and appropriately so!

Do I have any business leading worship?

I sin on purpose all the time. I know something is wrong but I do it anyway. I often wonder if I have any business leading people in worship when I'm so sinful and broken. And if I want to be honest with myself, I don't always try my absolute hardest to change. My worship is genuine, but I'm always wondering if I'm not just some big phoney baloney.

Am I too Catholic to be non-denominational?

Am I too Catholic to be non-denominational? Does non-denominational = Protestant?

Can someone continue to attend a church when you disagree with some of their fundamental theological conclusions? If you agree on all the big stuff, does it matter that you disagree with some of the small stuff? These are questions I'm wrestling with right now. 

But i should really learn how and when to bring up these topics because now it seems I've become that awkward family member who always says crazy/weird/offensive things at Thanksgiving, and this year you have some friends coming and you have to have that tough conversation like "Hey, you know how you're always saying crazy stuff, well could you, just this once...not do that."

A Memory Lasts Forever Too

I am so used to my digital life, my iPhone with its super cool and powerful camera, my dropbox account that costs me however much $ a month so that I can instantly download and share all of my ingenious family and candid shots.

I am so used to THAT that it takes all the effort I can muster simply to STOP.

Over the weekend my family and I went to the Great Wolf Lodge, an indoor water park, and then spent all day today at the Carolina Zoo. This vacation was on the heels of the most excruciating month we've had as a family. Lee has worked 12-15hr days for 7 days a week for at least 3 weeks straight. We learned so much from this month of over working and under connecting. And we have vowed never to let it happen again.

Me Cheating!! 

So during our vacation there were countless water slides, and magic quests, and meals, and games, and jokes, and stories, but very few made it to my digital photo album.

Instead of looking for a photo op, I was trying to savor the moment. Instead of stopping the laughter so I could quickly snap a few photos, I was just adding my voice to the laughter. Don't get me wrong, I was constantly slipping back into my old habits--stepping back from the fun and clicking away on my camera, but I consciously tried to distance myself from that behavior...

What is that!? Why is it so much more important to have a photo than to be a participant in the action? I feel like we think that if we don't capture it on film (figuratively), then it never happened and no one will ever remember this moment. But what I think really happens is that everyone remembers that moment, you just won't be in the memory. One rarely remembers who took the picture, just who was standing by his side!

I need to be better at being an active person in my family and not just an observant bystander. Hey, there's nothing wrong with capturing moments on your camera/phone. I just know that I allowed myself to be removed from the family time, in order to be the cameraman. I think a nice balance is needed. I'm hoping that I achieved that on this trip.

A while back a wrote a poem about always being behind the lens. If you're interested in checking it out, ---->Click here<----- nbsp="">