In the wake of a week of: celebrating Andi’s 5th bday,
Andi- the princess and kindergarten back pack combine to prep her for year #5!
having professional pictures taken of 3 kids at once, losing ground in the pursuit of a whole night of uninterrupted sleep with a 6 month old, and in the anticipation of a trip to California in 2 days that begins with a plane flight for our family of 5 that takes off at 6am (that’s “get our act together, our kids in clothes, and at the airport by 5am with all our stuff”– for you math majors out there)…I’ve been trying to hold it together. At my worst, I’ve been impatient and yelled. At my best, I settle in to the foundation of what is real and really important.
To reorient, from disorientation, back to orientation (thank you Isaac Anderson at Jacob’s Well for reminding me of Walter Brueggemann’s take on the orientation themes of the Psalms) wherein I remember that God is good and loving and doing work that I wake up to and join in with my feeble humanity when I can, I refer to these truths, from friends, scripture, and other quirky folks.
My world has been blessedly disturbed by speakers/writers this past month. Kent McDonald (professor at Whitworth College and YL staff person) spoke at the YL Student Staff weekend in Chicago. Paul Young (author of The Shack) and Baxter Kruger (trinitarian theologian and writer) came to Jacob’s Well to speak. Finally, I’ve been ruminating on all things being overwhelmed and overcommitted in my own times of silence and solitude. It’s been a revealing, rocking, and rowdy 3 weeks inside my heart and head!
Here’s what I’ve heard, been asked, and want to remember:
God is good all the time and is intimately involved in the details of our lives– Paul Young.
God at God’s essence is Ultimate Relationship- community and connection and perfect, loving union. -Young and McDonald. We are meant to live connected and caught up in relationships and connection.
Jesus has brought me here and is with me here– my boss, Tom, encouraging me to find a cue that calls me to this reality in moments of being caught up in chaos.
God is light and in God there can be no darkness at all. Jesus enters into our darkness. –Young and Krueger
God only does what is light and love. –Young
God is about participation, and invitation, and pursuit and relationship. –Young, McDonald overlap
I want to be a woman of the resurrection (hope and joy) and not resentment (control, worry, anxiety, anger)– Thought from Tom’s devo that God brought to light more fully as I settled into the Mary and Martha story in Luke 10.
Jesus lovingly reorients Martha saying, 41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Can I,
in moments of perplexing and frantic “NOW!”s or “I DON”T KNOW WHAT TO DO”s,
breathe,
say “Thank you”,
and seek the one thing that really matters
instead of the many things that might instead worry and upset me?
I can’t wait to go to California- to connect with my family and celebrate the wedding of my cousin Heather and her fiance Luke. I can’t wait to go on vacation, to be warm!, and to be away. I do pray I can center and settle into these truths when the airport becomes a stress bucket, or our kids are up at midnight, or I can’t accomplish the whole list- and do the one thing that really matters: love! and party!
