Think Pink

Bring the Rain

This week we received about thirteen inches of rain. THIRTEEN! That is more rain than I want or enjoy; it's more rain than my little street can handle.  Trees came down, slowly, almost majestically as the dirt became too wet and unstable to hang on to their roots anymore.  Flamingos prance, and spoonbills feed in the lowest lying areas that are now frog-filled orgies of standing water. Palm fronds and Spanish moss and random unidentifiable bits of debris are strewn across my yard waiting for me to gather them and restore order again. Everything squishes and clings and crumbles and my thoughts feel soggy and heavy as the air around me.

The problem with keeping a public record of my thoughts is that so much happens in my life that really isn't meant for public consumption.  Such is the nature of ministry.  There is a demand that those in it be completely transparent in their own lives and completely discreet in all the details that aren't personal but which affect them deeply.  Many, many issues affect me daily, weekly, monthly and yet spewing them here across the public airwaves is no answer, and yet, they clog my brain and block my words.  They render me speechless. After many years, I am still learning how to steer around these areas, to put them in their own thought storage-space and carry on with other areas as normal.  It's harder than it looks.

Slipping into autumn is harder than it looks as well.  So much started so suddenly that I scramble, scramble, scramble and barely keep ahead of the next day's demands.  Hunky hubby and I both struggle to maintain a semblance of order at work and at home, and snatch brief moments together when we can.  Eventually we must find equilibrium right? I hope so. Constantly playing Sisyphus is exhausting.

And now for something completely different:

Appetizer
What is your favorite type of art?

well, I guess it depends on how broadly you want to stretch art.  I do love the art of photography.  stylistically for traditional art, I love both the boldness of Van Gogh, Gauguin and Seurat, and the soft muted feel of Monet, Renoir and Degas. I am actually going to start teaching my children to love and appreciate art (hat tip to Lori for GREAT lesson ideas on teaching this). 

Soup
When was the last time you got a free lunch (or breakfast or dinner)? Who paid for it?

Well, hunky hubby takes us out often, but I don't think that counts as a free meal.  Last month some close friends from church took our entire family out to eat.  We really enjoyed it and are returning the favor by making them dinner (at their house-HH is DYING to get in their kitchen) next weekend.

Salad
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how emotional are you?

You realize I am woman, yes? If I put a number down it will be invalid in 5 minutes.  Let's see, how sappy am I ? 0.  I have no sap.  How touched am I by events? 7-8.  How practical am I? 9.  So sometimes practical covers up the touched part, and I bring all those thoughts home to mull over in private rather than making a public spectacle of myself.

Main Course
Approximately how long do you spend each day responding to emails?

way, way, way, way too much

Dessert
To what temperature do you usually set your home’s thermostat?

78*- we don't run the unit in the winter so that it the summer temp.

Hear me Roar

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.--Walt Whitman

Lion at the Door

I am, at best, a reluctant pastor's wife.  I don't fit the mold. It's not what I was looking for in a mate, and not what my mate was looking for in a career.  I suppose God put me in this position knowing that I've got a little ego (shocker, there. I know.), and knowing that I would never imagine in any way shape or form that I would successfully complete any of my pastoral wifely duties without extreme divine intervention. No believe me, it's true.

One of the most disturbing and frustrating things about my life, is seeing the dirty undergarments of the church in action.  It is frustrating, discouraging and sometimes downright disgusting to know the details of what makes a church run.  It's prettier from the pews and easier when one can merely be concerned with one's own responsibilities and not so much with keeping the gears and cogs of a tremendous vehicle moving smoothly.

It becomes more difficult when I, personally, question the efficacy of the modern American Church construct as a whole (though much like the atrocious federal education system, the only way to rectify it at this point is a complete overhaul).  I watch the hunky hubby day after day, week after week do everything but cut off his own arms to push, pull, pummel and provide for a group of people who are to a large extent, unready or unwilling to get up and do for themselves.  I know that this is the case in dealing with adults as well.  The old 20% of the people do 80% of the work is alive and well in the churches of today.  I question the mentality of "If I just do more to reach them" and wonder at what point we say, "You've heard it, now live it."  I'd like to have answers.  I don't.  That frustrates me all the more.

I've watched this fall as the leadership of my church has struggled, wrangled, reorganized, refocused and attempted to relate to each other with mixed results.  I worry about our focus even though I know our heart.  The term "best show in town" has been bandied about and I meet that at different times with outrage, hurt, anger, shame and even agreement. I tend to take the stance that people will see what they want to see. Hunky Hubby the stance that perception is reality.  I don't know which one of us is right, or which attitude is more pleasing to God. I know the hearts of the "performers," but to those that don't (and in a large church, that would be most people), what they see is everything.

I question every action, thought, motive and program of that which I was once so certain of, and it makes me tired and confused, and answers are hard to find.  I search for solid ground.

I hear the lion at the door.

Fall-ish

This is about the only time of year when I really think of living somewhere else.  A time that if the hunky hubby said, "Let's move to...[insert somewhere with seasons here]", I would jump up and race about throwing my one sweater and jacket into a duffel and hit the road rather than cringing and whining about the beach and windows open seven months a year and how nice the hammock is in February while everyone else is having a blizzard.  We don't really have fall here, we have fall-ish.  I am happy to say that fall-ish has graced us with it's presence a bit earlier this year.  Oh sure, we're still in the low 90's most day with a humidity that is practically visible, and afternoon thunderstorms rolling in off the ocean, but there is a gentler, more caressing quality to the air in the afternoon.  The breeze is pleasant.  It cools the brow rather than blasting like heat from the just-opened oven.  The ground doesn't soak up the sun and blast it back up in a form of sun worship until long after sundown. Fall-ish.  It gives me hope that soon, soon my season of open windows will come and air that is sea salt tangy will waft me off to sleep each evening to the serenade of the back-yard owls. 

Unfortunately with fall-ish comes an actually fall (no ish) schedule which has rolled over me like dark clouds off the ocean.  It tosses me this way and that with fits of rain and moments of glorious sunshine slantings as I try to determine the space of time to the next downpour and if I should even bother putting on dry clothes or just keep squishing around in the old ones until late-at-night when I pull on an old t-shirt, and read until sleep claims me--sometimes hours, sometimes moments.

All the while inside of me there is a changing that has no "ish" to it.  If it were a season it would be written in all caps with italics: CHANGE. Things are rearranging, realigning purging and organizing (call it spiritual housekeeping, now if I only I could find time to mirror it in the physical), which is never comfortable and often seems never ending.  Though being allowed a fallow season this summer, I feel I should have seen this one coming. In the never-ending-ness of it all, I wonder sometimes if I am truly effecting change, within or without, or if I merely make myself busy with tedium, and if so....?

These are all the things that come to me in my fall-ish season, a spiritual season which works it's way toward redemption in the form of Rosh Hashanah, a natural season which works it's way towards harvest, a physical season which works it's way toward instituting a new set of behaviors and activities, and through them all the common thread of of old things becoming new and better.  I have hope.

Wordless Wednesday : He loves me

Pregnant

My friend Stephanie is currently the cutest pregnant woman in the world.  Seriously.  She's like the poster child for adorably pregnant.  She has the most perfect little round belly, and I know, I mean I KNOW, she has got to be sick of me touching it and rubbing it and talking to it every time we meet. It's a serious problem, but I cannot keep my hands off that belly, and I will be eternally grateful that she humors me with a smile and doesn't girly-slap me one thousand times or run (waddle) screaming away every time she sees me approach.  I am so glad she is pregnant, and really, really, really, really, really glad that I am not. 

Except that I am (deep breaths now folks. We are going somewhere that is not my well worn uterus)

technically the definition for pregnant has the following meanings, aside from the one we typically think of:

2.	fraught, filled, or abounding (usually fol. by with): a silence pregnant with suspense.

3.	teeming or fertile; rich (often fol. by in): a mind pregnant in ideas.

4.	full of meaning; highly significant: a pregnant utterance.

5.	of great importance or potential; momentous: a pregnant moment in the history of the world.

After a period of quiet acceptance, I am finally at a place where I can vaguely see the outline of things on the horizon, and those things excite me.  I find myself unfamiliar with the things I think, feel and do, and at the same time secretly thrilled at the changes going on inside me.  I sing; I contemplate; I organize and make ready the places I inhabit for the things that are to come.

And I remember what it's like to give birth.  I remember pain, and fear and exhaustion.  But I know that those things mean nothing in the face of what is to come.  They are merely moments (or hours or days) to be endured before I am presented with the great and miraculous gift of life.

I am pregnant, a pregnancy of the Spirit, and the birth pangs are coming, but for now, there is only excitement and the secret glee that no one can pat my burgeoning soul.

Thursday and Friday on Saturday

Thirteen Things I want to find the time to do:

• exercise
• organize/ streamline recipes and meal planning
• Holiday Grand Plan
• study Spiritual Disciplines
• devote myself to leading Disciple 2 to the best of my ability
• cultivating friendships I have let stagnate, and growing some in-person friendships that are developing
• finish reading challenges I have started
• work with the amazing and talented and beautiful Marisa (I know what you did, Marisa) to finish my new web site
• develop a plan to raise money to go to both Az and Kenya
• become well-rounded while educating my children
• write more
• get more actively involved with my husband's ministry
• making the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart pleasing to God

• rain- for the first time since I got home.
• I got my silly back. I missed my silly so.
• snakes in my garden, owls in my woods, squirrels in my garbage and spiders everywhere.  I love my house.  I truly do.
• podcasts
• David Crowder- I think I have memorized every nuance of the A Collision album this summer. I still love it.
• worship team
• a night in a hotel with the hunky hubby
• tattoos