One Month in to our new life

 We sold our house and moved to new state, one month ago. 

We started talking about making this change 3 years ago. Two years ago, God said to put everything on hold and wait. Last year life fell apart, and we were just hanging on by the skin of our teeth. So we decided at the end of 2019 to move this summer as soon as school was out...then 2020 happened and everything in life got put on hold. But God made it clear we should go ahead with our plans...and our house sold in 5 days, and now here we are, in Colorado one month into our new life.

Our friends opened up their home and let us move in. They gave us their whole basement. And actually it going pretty well. 

Grateful for this season

9/11

It has been 17 years...there are high school seniors who were not born or at least who were babies when the planes crashed. It is the defining moment for a gereation...I mean literally THE MOMENT. When researchers were looking at where to cut off the Millennial generation from GenZ they decided on 1996 as the cut off because that was the youngest they felt people would have been really impacted by the terror attacks.

Seth asked me this morning if they had to keep learning about 9/11...kinda like we talked about it in school last year and the year before and the year before...do we have to keep talking about it? I tried to explain that for those of us who remember the planes crashing it was so impacting that we can't help but talk about it.

I can see that it will fade from our collective memory the same way the attack on Pearl Harbor has...

In some ways I think that is ok...I mean I think maybe we should not just focus on the horror of that day...

I heard yesterday the survivors of 9/11 are trying to transform the day from just a day of remembrance to a day of service in honor of those who died. Really I think that is a beautiful thing to do...and if we can hand that "service in honor" to the next generation not just "let's talk about this awful thing and be sad. I think is the right way to go. Because what I want to remember about that day is the first responders who rushed in, and how the passengers of Flight 93 gave their lives to protect our Captial, how we all just sat at work on watched tv and went to lunch as a whole office just to be together, of the guy who stood on an overpass above the 210 and just held our flag for the passing cars to see...the unity we felt as country and the pride we shared with each other, that is what I want to remember and pass on.

10 years

Seth is going to be 10 years old on Saturday.  On one side I am sad because my squishy little boy is not squishy anymore. He is tall, and angular. I am also so excited to have him growing up...ten is when I feel like being a kid got good. Ed and I would be gone all afternoon riding our bikes. I am excited that he gets to have more experiences like that.
Also books! He loves books and we have gotten read books together (Harry Potter) and now he is recommending books to me.

Ten years though...kinda crazy

Flourish

"Lisa:  So, this is the thing that was really fundamental for me, and this revelation came to me while standing on the stage in South Africa, speaking for the Justice conference there last year ... actually literally a year ago. I was standing on the stage and it hit me. The ancients thought of the image of the king as being a marker of where that king ruled. So, like Jesus is in the temple with His ... going back and forth with the Sadducees, pharisees, and scribes, and they're trying to entrap Him.They say, "Yo, yo, yo Jesus, should we be paying taxes?" That's my Philly coming out there.Jen:  I like it. Yes. The Philly version-Lisa:  Philly girl. But yeah, so and then Jesus says to them, what? He says, "Go get me a coin." And so they do, and He says, "Whose icon is on the coin?" That word icon is the same word, it's the Greek version of the Hebrew word “tselem,” which is the word that's used in Genesis 1:26 when he says, "Let us make humankind in our tselem."So he says, "Whose tselem" if you're gonna talk Hebrew, "is on the coin?" And they say, "Caesar." And He says, "Okay then give to Caesar what is Caesar's." In other words, because Caesar's image is on that coin, Caesar owns the coin. It is Caesar's dominion. And then what does He say? He says, "But give to God what is God's." ​Well, what is God's? We belong to God, because we bear the image of God. We have the tselem of God imprinted on us. Now get this. Like I said, the ancients thought of the image of the king as being a marker of where that king ruled. We were created to be markers of where God ruled, not where each other ruled, and where that marker flourishes, where you see images of the king at the entrance of the city and on the coins, and they're all doing well, you know that that kingdom is flourishing. But where you see images of the king crushed, maligned, toppled, twisted, melted down, then you know that there is war against that king happening in that kingdom, or against that kingdom, because the image of the king is being crushed.Well, look at it this way. I think that on the first page of Genesis, where either the priests or Moses are coming out of subjugation, and they declare that all humanity is made in the image of God, and they say, "And let them have dominion," in case you don't get it. "Let them exercise agency. Let them be freed from oppression. Let them actually steward the world." What they're saying is the image of God is a marker of where God rules, and the thing is, where those images are crushed, where people's capacity to exercise dominion is limited, distorted, ignored, you are also limiting, distorting, crushing the image of God on earth, and therefore, declaring war against the kingdom of God.So, what would it look like for us to lay down our arms against God? You see, I don't think that we mean to declare war against God. I mean, even evangelicals who voted in someone who absolutely is declaring war against the image of God, every day, and the way that we are making decision about how the polis will live together. This current president believes in human hierarchy, and is legislating according to human hierarchy." ~This is an excerpt of Jen Hatmaker's interview with Lisa Sharon Harper. You can listen to the whole thing here. It is a must listen in my mind.

After I listened about two weeks ago I have not been able to get away from the idea of flourishing. I cannot stop thinking about what it would look like to not only flourish but to be someone who helps others to flourish themselves. 

The scripture that keeps coming to mind is Mark 4:30-32:

 30 Again he said, “What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds on earth. 32 Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds can perch in its shade.

It is an eco-system...a healthy eco-system where everything is connected and one organisms' health is tied to the next.


We have milkweed in our back yard. We planted it for the butterflies. And it has been amazing to watch our yard be a butterfly nursery. At any one time you can see the whole lifecycle right before your eyes. But it is more than just butterflies, there are bees and lizards and ladybugs and humming birds...my yard is alive and flourishing.
It goes thru cycles though. A few months ago when we had tons of caterpillars on the plants, the plants did not look so good. All the leaves had been eaten off and it was just stocks coming out of the ground. But that was flourishing too, because over 2 months we had 20 butterflies emerge from their chrysilas (way higher number than the average 2% that make it from egg to butterfly) 

The opposite of a healthy eco-systems is one where invasive species have been introduced.  "invasive species": An invasive species is a plant, fungus, or animal species that is not native to a specific location, and that has a tendency to spread to a degree believed to cause damage to the environment, human economy or human health. Wikipedia

The thing about invasive species is that the invasive species itself looks and is healthy. It flourishes at the expense of the other plants and animals around it. It does not give...It only takes.

So I feel Jesus challenging my to really look at my life and world to look for places where people are really flourishing and where they are not. 

How can I be "milkweed" and not an invasive species? 

How can our institutions and communities be healthy eco-systems? 

My head and heart are full of the metaphor, but I am not sure what the out working is yet fully. I will keep thinking...I just had to put it down somewhere.

Struggle

I have been thinking about struggle for the last couple of weeks. Mostly about the way that my upbringing in the American evangelical SoCal church culture has left me under prepared to handle struggles in my own life.

I don't expect life to be perfect....but my life is very good.  The hard things in my life are not cancer, or sick kids, or my marriage being really rocky. So in many ways I feel like I should not be complaining because people around me are facing bigger issues. And trust me I know that I have heaps to be grateful for and spends tons of time practicing gratitude.

But I am starting to see that the worldview I grew up under had a subtle not fully articulated belief that there was a way to crack the code. That if you worked hard enough, or believed the perfect way life could be as close to perfect this side of heaven as we could make it be.... That if you follow God's leading it would always be smooth. That his will for your life is good, and good equals easy and fun.

I know that I was never taught that...I remember plenty of sermons on hardship...and trials...and learning about the hard shit the guys in bible lived thru. I remember teachings on how "Name it and Claim it" theology was not biblical. But what I saw acted out and what I picked up from watching my leaders was "easy path equals  open door, open door equals God's will". Even teachings about having peace about something being a way that God leads got translated in my head to "easy" or "follow the path of least resistance ".

Fast forward to last year when Dave and I started to feel like change was in the wind. We spent a long time praying and talking to people we trust and thinking about things and we came to conclusions about what we felt our season was going to be and what it was going to look like and when we were going to start walking towards it...and now nothing


Now I am seeing shallow my practical theology was/is. We know what God said...We have sign posts to mark that we heard...but things are now happening at the speed we expected. (And in Dave's head nothing is happening at all) 

And we are struggling with life and with each other.  Nothing fits anymore and all the things that used to help and bring comfort don't.

And into all this God has started highlighting all the places in scripture where struggle and hardship our shown from the beginning as what it looks like to follow him. Things that I knew but it is like seeing for the first time.

I am not sure what to do with everything I am feeling yet. I am not even doing at great job explaining in this blog.

I guess it comes down to this...following Jesus in this season means that I am saying yes to hard things knowing that they are going to be hard.

Parenting

Easter 2017

Writing about each of the kids has had me reflecting on my parenting choices and changes.

When Seth was little I had such idealistic views of parenting. I was going to be firm and consistent. And I was not going to change, I was going to have the same standards and the same methods for both first born and the youngest. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I really thought that not changing was the right way. I did not value the growth that each child would cause. 

I was wrong. Change is good. 

My view of children and parent was narrow in the beginning. Do X the right way and Y will happen. I did not appreciate how much babies are little individuals right from the start. What works for kid A in a situation is most likely NOT was is going to work for kid B in the same situation.

I was also very short sighted about what a good kid was/is. My vague picture of a good kid was really something more like a cute robot that you could get to keep still and quiet whenever it was inconvenient for them to be _________...other than cute and quiet.

I did not know that if I wanted kids that knew how to communicate I would have to let them have a voice...to listen to their dissent and take it to heart. I would have to practice humility and apologize for all the times that I don't live up to my own standard.  If I say "in this home we speak with respect, and we don't yell at each other, no matter what we feel." Then I have to not yell at them not matter how pissed off they make me, and I have to say sorry EVERY stinkin' time I slip up.

But I also did not know how much joy I would get from seeing them grow as individuals. They have each surprised me so much.  Seth is a fantastic public speaker...he lead a group project where his team had to give an oral report on something. They got 100%! Every time he has to do a presentation in front of the class he gets an A.  Always has.  He is so natural at it that even having a stutter does not stop him. His stutter HAS NEVER stopped him from speaking up, or participating. And I am so incredibly proud of him, both for pushing thru the challenge and for leaning into his natural gifting.

The reality of raising tiny humans to be strong, kind, capable humans is so much harder, so much bigger, so much more wonderful than anything I ever thought before they placed the first tiny human in my arms and let me keep him.

Changing is good. Growing is good. Repenting is good.

I am so grateful to my 3 (not so) tiny humans for making me change. I am so glad I am not the mom I thought I wanted to be 10 years ago while I was counting down the last month for Seth to be born.  I think I am a better one.

Seth

My baby is 9 😭😭😭😭😭

It is so hard to remember that he used to be small (ok he was never really "small"), but he was small to me. I look at pictures of him as a baby and it blows my mind.  The years that it was just him and me all day long seems to far away, and short.  In the middle of them, it seemed like forever.

That is the way time works though, right?  Whatever season you are in feels like the only season, with no beginning and no ending, and then it changes...sometimes you don't even notice the change. You just look back and suddenly the baby you spent hours rocking, and then hours teaching to sleep in their own, is 9 and reading Harry Potter and Percy Jackson.

Before I had kids, I spent a lot of time babysitting and teaching in Children's church. I was an aid at a preschool my senior year of high school.  Babies! Toddlers! They are my jam! When Seth was born I really wondered about what I going to do when he got bigger.  I was never really around kids older than 4. I wondered how I would relate. Would I like older kids? Would they like me?

Older kids are awesome! 

Seth and I talk about deep stuff. We enjoy books together. He can do chores!!! (It is so awesome to be able to tell the kids to pick up the living room and then have them do it! Chores are the best!!!)

Seth is also taking band this year at school.  He choose the trumpet.  Oi! I know that it will get better as he goes along, but man I feel bad for the band teacher who has to listen to all the new kids play together.

I am actually really starting to look forward to him getting older, and growing in our friendship.