everchanging view

one part of my job at Lake Forest Church during this season of Advent has been to write our Advent readings and prayers.  
here's what we read and prayed together this morning.

a few years ago i stumbled across a book that has rocked my world repeatedly, challenging me and my various whacked points of view: listening to your life by frederick buechner.
the reading for monday was this:
'what if anything have you and i done to battle against the great darkness of things?
as parents and the children of parents,
as wives and husbands and friends and lovers,
as players of whatever parts we have chosen to play in this world,
as wielders of whatever kind of power,
as possessors of whatever kind of wealth,
what other human selves have we sacrificed something of our own sweet selves to help and heal?'

even now, as i type this, i can feel my heart lurch inside my chest,
what HAVE i done?
what AM i doing?
now, i help the poor and all that jazz.  i volunteer and serve and give.
but what does it cost me?  what have i sacrificed of my own sweet self???
AND (dang it,  frederick) he starts with parents and children and husbands and wives and friends...not the poor homeless people out there to whom we can write a check, put it in an envelope and send it on.  (please know that i'm not discounting that at all; write that check and send it)
instead he asks how am i sacrificing (not just giving...there is a marked difference) of my own sweet self to those that are closest to me?  for me, sometimes it's easiest to give to those who aren't as close to me, who don't piss me off or hurt my feelings or diss me. but when it's the ones who day in and day out are up in my face....
that's hard.  and i suck at it.

i have a friend whose mom is staying with her.  her mom is sick. and high maintenance.  and self absorbed.  she abdicated self care years ago both physically and emotionally so she's feeble and frail.  in body and spirit.  and even though my friend is struggling herself with acute and chronic back pain, i watched her tenderly care for her mom; sacrifice of her sweet self to help and heal.  quietly, like the widow dropping her mite in the offering plate, fixing her mom's plate, giving her medicine, changing a bandage on a wound that is slow to heal.

buechner goes on to quote a traditional advent prayer: 'give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light.'
put on the light like a garment. like a uniform.

this, this giving of our sweet selves in order to battle against the great darkness of things, is the meaning of Christmas to me.  choosing to give because Christ chose to give.  following His example of giving up his God-dom (or whatever)  to put on human skin and flawed humanity among those who had no use for him, who didn't recognize who he was or what he was saying.
who dissed him.

when i think about my life,  it's so freakin' easy to be selfish, to let myself off the hook, to cling to my rights.  but i want to wear the uniform.  so today i'm putting it on.  and we'll see about tomorrow...

it's stunning how polarized we are about the upcoming election.
that's a newsflash huh??  nothing like stating the obvious.

i'm saddened by it all.
the name calling.
the faith doubting.
the sheer ugliness of our society towards one another.  it's not civil.
we forget we are on the same side.
not Romney's side.
or Obama's side.
but the side of America.  the UNITED states of America.

my husband and i disagree on some political issues.
i'm not gonna lie to you.  last election was hard for us.
but this time around we've had better conversations, civil discussions, heated at times, but civil.
on many things we've just had to agree to disagree.
and there are issues where he thinks i'm flat out wrong and tells me so.
and visa versa.
but ultimately our disagreements remain about the issues.  it's not personal with us.  i don't doubt his character or his faith or his intelligence because we don't agree about everything.
and visa versa.
cause ultimately we are going the same direction.  we just disagree on the best route to take.  and at the end of the day, life is more than, bigger than who sits in the oval office.
and that's something algie and me definitely agree on.

(nester.  i'm sorry.  i'm trying.  it was really ambitious of me to sign up for 31 days of blogging.  but i'm taking you at your word. 'It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.'  

today's words are the inspiration for the theme of the month.  written by one of my all time favorite artists, James Taylor.

you can listen here.

at least that's what Elton John said.
and i guess for some folks sorry is the hardest word.
for various reasons.
some people are arrogant and never think they are wrong.  about anything.
some people are rude.  they just don't care enough to say 'i'm sorry.' 
some people aren't self aware enough to know they need to be sorry. but this post isn't about any of these people...

it's about those those people who move about their lives with purpose.  they are thoughtful and intentional.  they don't need to say i'm sorry as often as many because they know where they are going and who they are.  they have the right amount of confidence. 
i wanna be one of these people.

i am one of those people who overuses those two little words.
now i know that everyone makes mistakes.  and being able to say 'i'm sorry' is hugely important. 
but i'm one of those people who is always saying 'i'm sorry.'
and just in the last few days, i've realized something.
that's not good.

sometimes i say 'i'm sorry' when i really mean 'don't be mad at me.'  
i say 'i'm sorry' to appease; to keep the peace.
i say 'i'm sorry' because i'm second-guessing myself, my ideas, my words.
sometimes i say 'i'm sorry' because i'm a suck-up and a brown-noser.
yeah.
i am.

yes.  it's true.
i'm a people pleaser.
i HATE for people to be mad at me.
my friends
my co-workers
my kids
my hubs
you
so 'i'm sorry' becomes trite, overused, and disingenuous.

sometimes people are just gonna be upset with me.
because i said 'no'
because i was actually right and 'they' were not.
because we disagree.
just because i subscribe to different ideology/theology doesn't mean they need an apology. (cute, huh?)
sometimes that's just gotta be the way it is; they will just have to be mad.  if i did what i thought was right, then the chips just have to fall where they may.

there are those times when i need to say the words; when i'm wrong and i need to let people know.
that's when an 'i'm sorry' or better yet a 'please forgive me' is the right thing. 
but then it's up to them. and i have to be ok with that. 

so sing on elton...i'm joining the refrain.

cars are just cars.  unless you're me. 

today we sold our 2004 expedition.  we bought it new (before dave ramsey)
and even upgraded to the deluxe version with a DVD player and 3 headsets (an upgrade from the usual 2 because we had three kids.  we were hooking EVERYONE up with this purchase.)
honestly, we had no business buying this vehicle; it was too much money and we financed it for too long.  but we loved it. and i had been driving a piece of crap voyager minivan (not even a grand voyager...just a plain one) and we succumbed to temptation and bought the truck.  See?  it wasn't even a car.  it was a TRUCK, a bad ass machine that could handle a screaming kids with the slip of a DVD.  Just open up that sunroof and let the freedom in.  yep.  that's what i thought. 

we sold clifford for several reasons: we didn't need the room.  i don't carpool any more.  everyone drives.  two are leaving for college.  3 people don't need an SUV. 
and we needed cash.  college is expensive. so again, clifford to the rescue.

when we bought Clifford, our kids were 7, 9 and 11.  they are 15, 18 and 20 now. 
a lifetime.  of carpools.  and field trips.  and vacations.  of trips to school and the ER and baseball games and plays and PFO and swim meets.  of double buckling more kids that were legal and staff road trips.  trips to the vet.  of peace and quiet and my music when i needed that.
of conversations.  and singing bohemian rhapsody at the top of our lungs. 
of life as we lived it.  the good and the bad.

things change.  we have to as well. 
thanks clifford.

i was sitting with my friend Reeve a few weeks ago eating a super fabulous salad at Flatiron Kitchen and Taphouse in Davidson talking about blogging.  blogging is overwhelming to me. 
my friend Christina stopped looking at Pinterest because of how it made her feel.  sometimes i feel this way about blogs.  

maybe i just overthink it. 

maybe i just feel like most everyone who blogs seems like they have 'it' all together.

or they are super creative and have things that they made to share or sell. 

or they are funny.  

or they write 20 words that are so poignant when combined that they move me to tears. (well ok, that's not that hard to do; move me to tears, that is.)

maybe i think that a blog post should be words or ideas that are original.  
(an aside...this was why i could never write a song.  because it all seemed like something else that   had already been written)

i don't have any of those things to talk about.
but i do have a unique perspective.
--a 51 year old woman who wants the second half of life to matter as much as the first
--a mom with beautiful daughters who have become women in their own right; one who is a rising junior at a school in NYC and one who is going to be a freshman at ASU this fall. 
--a mom of a fabulous 15 year old son who has better fashion sense than i do.
--the wife of 21 years of a remarkably earnest man who is my complete opposite and who travels weekly.
--a creative director at a church 
--a daughter of aging parents who live in a different place from me
--a sister
--a friend
--a bit of a sap
--an extrovert who loves to be in the center of it
--a history major and former high school teacher
--a wanna be dancer
--a divorced person
--a Christ follower
--a seeker
--a procrastinator
--a deep thinker




but i do want to blog.  so in spite of my insecurities, i'm gonna write.  sometimes i'll post it and sometimes i won't. and i won't use capital letters. 

how does YOUR garden grow??

i garden in big spurts sorta like i decorate.  never ever a little at a time but always huge redesigns that are overwhelming.  then i'm done until the next time. 
wish i'd planted a garden this year.  i wish i'd planted some tomatoes and some cukes.  and squash.  but this year i didn't even plant one new flower.  instead i pulled some weeds and moved some things around (actually my two men did that for me, for mother's day.  in the rain.)
i have been cruising the internet, monrovia.com and such sites, researching new and fabulous flowers for the next season.  i've been pouring over pictures of compost piles and container gardens and walking my yard, talking to myself like a fool about what next season will be like.  dreaming about what i'll plant and grow.

and hold for the parallel...
that's what my like has been like for the last bit.  maintaining.  trying to pull the weeds and moving a few things around. some of that is because it wasn't the right time to plant something new.  some of that is because i've been procrastinating.  it's hard to do the hard work of tilling up the soil and digging the holes and planting the new things.  nurturing them and watering them. sometimes  it's easier to just let what's growing grow.   but in the meantime i've been doing lots of research for the next season.  it will bring many changes.  a few i dread, though it is the time for it.  the fruit is ripe and it's time to pick it. 

This is a quote by Donald Miller. Ran across it today as i was declaring war on the status quo of my life...I loved it then and I love it now.

"I want to keep my soul fertile for changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it's time for them to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not read the same page recurrently."

this is how appalling it is...

so last night algie and i went out for our 'state of our union' date. 
(we actually downloaded and printed the tiny twigs template for she and husband's time
and it was very helpful.  thanks, hayley)

we went to pfchangs and sat in the bar in the corner where it was a little more quiet. 
yummy lettuce wraps and a glass of wine and catching up.  i'd like to say we are really good at this, at getting away for a quiet night to chat and catch up but in all honesty, we suck.  we don't make enough time to talk, to date, to be friends.  you'd think having kids who are older without having to get a sitter would make it easier but we haven't found that to be true.

anyway...we talked about the good of 2011.  there were moments to celebrate and definite victories in our lives, in our family.  and we talked about the not so good of 2011. there are also things we lament, things we'd do better if we could do them over.  that we'd be better at if we could do it over.
so at the beginning of 2012, my sweetie and i are making some changes. one is to put each other first. with kids, with demanding jobs, it's so easy to postpone this, to let the tyranny of the urgent rearrange priorities without our permission simply because we weren't deliberate and calculated in our living. (did you notice i did NOT use the word 'intentional??')  we want to change this.  to prioritize each other.

another is to work as a team more. 
we could't be more different, he and i, but instead of letting that be a detriment, we are working toward becoming team grubbs.  it's a pretty cool thing.  for me it requires shutting up and letting him lead.  because i can be bossy. 
i mean really bossy. and  for him it requires leading and not managing (i HATE being managed.) 
and on both our parts it requires kindness and grace.

there were other things...talking about the year ahead.  about our beautiful kids and what this year holds for them.  about serving.  about vacations.  about losing weight (why is that ALWAYS on my list??)  and we made some dates to work toward being besties and not just roommates in the year to come.

at the end we got our fortune cookies and here they are...thought they were pretty right on for us.  algie's is the top one and as he leads us grubbs this is certainly true for him.
mine is the second...hehe.


what are you hoping for in your life in 2012?

loved these words this morning as i started for the 2374928594835439 time my attempt at morning reading/journaling/reflection/focusing...

isaiah 40:28-31


here's one of my favorite songs on hopefulness and new beginnings.  click the link and have a listen.
the cave by mumford and sons

how 'bout you?  what inspires you to hope?  where do you find the inspiration you need to be who you are made to be?  who you want to be?  your best you?