There and Back Again: Moments

Yesterday, my sister had her first baby.

 

Sawyer Mar is completely beautiful, has a good set of lungs, and apparently has very long toes and fingers, though he was wrapped up tightly when I held him in my arms and told him how very glad we are to have him here.

It was a beautiful moment to be there in the room with my sister and her fiance, with family members young and old who has stood vigil in the hallway just outside of the labor and delivery unit.

Empty {a virtual reality}

Yesterday, with just a couple of exceptions, every email I received was an email I wanted to receive.

There were messages from friends and coworkers; I'm always eager to hear from them. There was one message from the library telling me my checked-out books are due; I appreciate the reminder. And there was a message from Amazon.com telling me that an author I like has released a new book. I like hearing about that.

But for the most part, I no longer receive emails from Kohl's about their online sales or from Henry Fields about the free shipping on flowering trees. I never used the recipes from Stoneyfield Farms, so I won't miss their newsletters each week, and I don't even shop at Victoria's Secret. I bought a gift card there. Once. Do I have to get their daily emails?

Actually, I don't. There were a lot of emails I never read cluttering up my InBox each day. So recently, I went through a week's worth of junk email -- all the ads and newsletters I had apparently signed up for at one point - or not -- and following the yellow brick road of "Unsubscribe" I cut them off. Now, with the exception of a few stragglers, my InBox is filled with only the messages I care about.

Streamlining my electronic life is just the next step in my year of "empty." Since I spend hours each week on my laptop, my virtual space needs the same intentionality as my life offline. Just because it's measured in bytes and pixels doesn't mean I don't waste time with it or create idols out of it. 

I'm sure I signed up for some of the email newsletters I now longer get because I wanted to be the "first to know." The advertisements and sale flyers that cluttered my inbox created the same sort of discontent, covetousness, and envy that I try to avoid in television commercials. And the hundreds of work documents, downloaded pictures, and other old files I deleted, why do I insist on hanging on to these things?

Although cleaning up my online presence didn't protect me from hackers, it is one more way to protect me from myself and to prepare me for the kingdom.

My Heart Bleeds for Dandelions

On Holy Saturday, I mowed my lawn. 

While I was thinking of Jesus, dead in the tomb, I was making laps around my yard behind the mower, tripping over mole tunnels and sloshing through the wet patches left behind by the recent spring showers.

But it was the dandelions scattered throughout my quarter acre plot that really got me thinking about death and resurrection. No matter how many bags full of those perky weeds I kill each year, they always rise again the next Spring, more glorious, and sinister, than ever.

Good Friday: Do You Hear That?

Do you hear that?

It's the man denying,

It's the cock crowing,

It's his heart simply breaking in two.

Do you hear that?

It's His skin ripping,

It's the veil tearing,

It's their lives being pulled apart.

Do you hear that?

It's the earth splitting,

It's history dividing,

It's the Father turning away.

Do you hear that?

Silence.

There and Back Again: Jesus Died?

When one of my nephews was just five or six, he and his sisters went to church with my mom. Having not attended Sunday School much in his young life, he was new to the stories of the Bible and the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life.

At one point in the sermon, the preacher announced quite boldly that Jesus had died, and hearing this news for the first time, my nephew was shocked. He turned to my mom, a horrified look on this face.

"Jesus died?" he whispered loudly, wondering how the rest of the church could take this news so casually.

Will Work for Meaning

I've been thinking about work since I was a child.

As a very young girl, I liked to help my parents work, joining them hip to hip as they cooked lunch or repaired the car. As I grew older, I didn't like "actual" work - like picking up sticks in the yard or cleaning my room - instead, I played at work I felt was more significant. In those play times, I was a teacher or a meteorologist or a poet.

As I grew older, my goal for my life's work became focused and narrow: I would be a journalist. And so all my effort and education were toward that end. When I became a journalist, however, I felt unfulfilled. And so all my effort and education were toward a new end: finding meaningful work.

The People of Summer

Today, I am joining Dena Dyer, Ann Kroeker, and other bloggers from theHighCalling.org in a community writing project about crossing cultures. A few weeks ago, I wrote about an international cross cultural experience I had. Today, a trip down memory lane to my first experience away from home for a summer in Maine. That trip was equally eye opening to this naive 20-year-old.

______________________________________________________

The summer before I turned 21, I met my first teenage alcoholic, or at least the first person I knew who admitted it.

I was working in Ogunquit, a small town in southern Maine, and serving as a missionary through a local collective of churches that wanted to reach out to all of the tourists that came for the beaches and LL Bean.

During the day, I worked two part-time jobs: a gift shop clerk on Perkins Cove and a snack bar cashier on the beach. During the evenings and weekends, I shared my faith with tourists alongside the team of other college students from the ministry.

At least that was how the summer was supposed to go. As it turned out, our team consisted only of Carl, a seminary student who needed the experience to graduate; Pam, a jilted bride who had left her fiance at the altar in search of the meaning of life; and me, a Midwest green bean who had never been more than two hours away from her family for more than than a week at a time. And just as it would seem, our team had problems.

The tourists, also, didn't take well to college students trying to evangelize them, either. So I began getting to know other young people who were in Ogunquit for the same reason we were, minus the evangelizing part. They all came for the jobs.

The Gospel According to Hackers

Sunday, my alarm began going off at 5 a.m., and by 5:45, I was seriously considering getting out of bed. Tilly was snuggled tight into a ball, not wanting to be disturbed, and though I had to be a church early to practice for my reading part in the morning's worship services, I had more than an hour to get ready. So I decided to check my email.

I opened the email app on my iPhone from bed and noticed I had more than 30 unread emails just since the evening before. Has my blog gone viral? I ask myself, hoping. As I began perusing the subject lines, however, I realized the situation was far more sinister. Each of those 30 unread emails was an out-of-office message or a system-undeliverable message for emails sent from my account. But not by me.

I'd been hacked.

There and Back Again: Anger Management

Everyone knows you shouldn't write an email when you are angry. It's common knowledge now in that same way everyone knows you shouldn't play baseball in a lightning storm.

I even included this well-known fact in an article for our company newsletter recently. It was number six of a list of common email mistakes: composing an email in a hurry or when you are angry.

It's easy to misread the tone or subtext of an email, so don't assume the snarky voice in your head is how the sender intended it. Or even if it is, don't send an email you will regret after you have calmed down or taken a minute to think about it, I wrote.

And then yesterday, after sending an email I thought would be helpful, I received back a message that was arrogant and presumptuous. It made me mad. I grabbed the mouse, clicked the reply button, and furiously began typing.

My email back began with "Well, apparently . . ." and it went downhill from there. Long before I even thought about hitting the send button, and in fact, long before I even finished composing the email, however, I grabbed the mouse again and clicked the giant X button. Delete.

"Don't send an email you will regret after you have calmed down."

Taking Back the Night: Flood Waters

Whoever said it takes only 21 days for something to become a habit must have been doing something fun, or easy. Because I've been going to bed at 9 p.m. for 36 days now, give or take a couple of days, and it still doesn't feel natural. In fact, I'm probably going to stay up until midnight on the Saturday before Easter just because I can.

Why is it so hard to give things up?

The Logical Next Step

For the past three and a half months, I have been considering what it means to empty my life. Many of you have been walking with me through this year of "empty."

To be honest, when I chose the word, I imagined cleaning out closets, ending commitments, even repenting of sin. The safe kind of "emptying" that Jesus might ask a person to do. But I never thought my year of "empty" would lead me to put my house up for sale.

But that's what happened when I started evaluating my life, getting rid of good things that were robbing me of time to do great things. I love my house. The labors of love that have happened inside these walls produced tears and sweat, and they brought me closer to my dad, the chief laborer. I saw God provide for me in miraculous ways inside this house as my family and friends literally nursed me back to life following cancer.

I even had my heart broken in this house. More than once.

There and Back Again: Controversy

A few weeks ago, my church hosted a theological conference featuring Dr. Don Carson president and founder of the Gospel Coalition and a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. It was a wonderful weekend considering the Cross of Christ and meditating on what it means to be forgiven.

While we were safe and sound in the smooth waters of Christian doctrine, a stormy debate was raging in larger Christian circles over the doctrine of hell, and who ultimately, will end up there. Or rather, IF anyone will end up there. That debate continues, centered over the theology of Mars Hill pastor, Rob Bell, and his most recent book, Love Wins. This Christianity Today article provides a brief summary of the debate, if you are not familiar with it.

I have wanted to keep my head in the sand on this. I've wanted other people to tell me what I should or shouldn't think about hell. I don't want to hate Rob Bell; I've heard him speak, watched his videos, and I've always kind of liked him. Even though this apparent stepping outside of orthodox Christian doctrine doesn't really surprise me based on my general impression of him and his work.

So, I haven't done my research and won't offer opinions here. At least not today. But when I am ready to become part of the conversation - and I would encourage you to find your place at the table, too, in love - it will be after I have spent a lot of time reading what one other man is writing about it.

A Boy and a Dog

This past weekend, Tilly, my four-month-old puppy, and Kole, my three-and-a-half year old nephew met for the first time.

Kole had been expectantly waiting to meet Tilly, mentioning her on the phone each time I talked to him over the past couple of months. Tilly was oblivious, but since she loves people, especially little, energetic ones, I knew she would be thrilled.

Unfortunately, Tilly jumps and nibbles, and Kole is afraid of dogs bigger than him. (It's official: Tilly weighed in at 34 pounds at her last vet appointment, though she's probably even bigger now, and Kole weighs 33 pounds.)

Rewriting the Rules

Last week, I was helping a coworker develop a spreadsheet for the daily work her team does. The goal was to allow her to enter a few pieces of data and have the spreadsheet calculate the values based on some complex formulas.

But first, I needed to write the rules.

So I asked her questions that began with, "So every time . . ." or "So you always . . ." and she would look at me hesitantly.

"Well, yes, but there are exceptions to every rule."

She's right, of course. But when I am working with formulas and spreadsheets, there are no exceptions. Instead, I have to rewrite the rules.