11
August

Sepia-tone Lovin’

I’m a fan – a Jack Johnson fan. I’m still discovering him even though he may be so three years ago. I’m diggin’ on the surfer sage. And I can get sucked in to some acoustic guitar coupled with earthy folk wisdom and colorful language (aren’t I quite the music reviewer?). Anyway, he breathes an ocean breeze on my mood, fits a hammock under my fanny, and covers me in a soft shade on any spell we spend together. Here are some of my favorite lines from In Between Dreams (my cornball commentary in italics):

Our dreams … they are made out of real things, like a shoebox of photographs with sepia-tone lovin’ – “Better Together” (sepia-tone lovin’ is too much for me to handle – brilliant)
We’re just moments. We’re clever but we’re clueless. – “Never Know” (gritty truth!)
We got everything we need right here. And everything we need is enough. – “Banana Pancakes” (can I remember this before I make another trip to Target?)
Where’d all the good people go? I’ve been changin’ channels; I don’t see them on the tv shows. Where’d all the good people go? We got heaps and heaps of what we sow. – “Good People” (super valid question! )
[TV] Station to station – desensitizing the nation… – “Good People” (how many mug shots do we need to see on the local news each night; surely there should be a limit…)
Well, too much silence can be misleading. – “No Other Way” (I can concoct a host of dire scenarios in somone’s silence…)
We don’t really need to find reason ’cause out the same door that it came; well, it’s leaving. – “No Other Way” (the subjectivity of reason makes it deceptively unreliable)
He shot the future in the foot with every step he took – “Staple It Together” (know some people who are doing this right now; painful to watch…)
His walls are getting taller; his world is getting smaller – “Staple It Together” (the first has always led to the latter in my own journey)
A brand new baby was born yesterday, just in time. Papa cried, baby cried, said your tears are like mine – “If I Could” (every now and then I am taken aback by the universality of the human experience; very little, if anything, unique to an individual – the full circle of it all…)
Check him out if you haven’t; in my estimation, he’s pretty rockstar!
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8
August

Proud Momma

Okay, summer is drawing to a close, and I think my girls and I have finally reached the point where we are ready for a return to structure – as boring and tedious as that sounds. But I wanted to show off my sweeties in a post dedicated to them and how much they bless my life. Two anecdotes:
1) Campbell (3 yrs) – A couple of days ago the three of us poured candle wax into cold water to watch it harden quickly. After it had completely hardened, I allowed both girls to play with the wax. Well, much to my dismay, they crumbled it into 7000 tiny pieces of wax (they were making dog food, they explained). I then informed them that all of the wax had to be cleaned up and thrown away. They handled that news okay and began to dispose of the wax. Only thing is, they weren’t disposing of it properly. They were, at Carson’s leading, dropping the wax down the air conditioner vent. Had my six year-old lost her noodle? She knew, without a doubt, that was unacceptable and I punished her. Right or wrong, I only punished her because she led the bandwagon of disobedience. This absolutely floored Campbell. She asked me if I was going to give her a spanking, and I said I was not. She sat over in her little pink chair in her little playhouse in the kitchen and just pondered that. And then, after mulling over this event a few moments, she busted out with one of the cutest things I think she has ever said. “Momma, you wanna know what (kinda drawn out)? I think you are berry smart for not givin’ me any spankin’s.”
2) Carson (6 yrs) – Carson is elated to be returning to school; she loves it! We had registration at school yesterday, and she wanted to get there as soon as it began to find out who her teacher will be. The night before she set out her clothes, shoes, new bookbag (which she insisted on carrying) and even put toothpaste on her toothbrush for the morning. She wanted to get ready in a flash to get to that school (I am so proud of my lil’ student). When preparing her bookbag, she announced that she wanted to give $1 to her principal to use on buying stuff for school. She taped a note on the dollar that read I love my school and stuck it in a pocket on her bag. So, as we were making our way to the registration room, her principal came tearing down the hall carrying a flower arrangement. Carson stopped her, explained what she wanted to do, and gave her the money. I thought that was too cool for school!
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5
August

Now for the Rest of the Story – Part II

Continued…

So that spark of hope came in a conversation in a friend’s living room on November 20, 2006 (if my memory serves me correctly). It was the first real live conversation about being part of a new church in Florence; Chris and I did not initiate that conversation, but I was coming out of my skin with excitement by its conclusion (Chris, on the other hand, was a little (okay, a lot) more reticent). We began to pray about whether this could be what God had for us. It became clear pretty quickly that it was.

And let me be very quick to say that it wasn’t because we couldn’t find a church we “liked”; we hadn’t even visited all the churches we had planned to visit. It had everything to do with finding where God’s peace rested for us, and it was in this endeavor that we found it. And it was often a torturous process. Here we were, two lay couples believing we were suppose to be part of a church start. How dumb does that sound? People thought we were idiots. If you knew about it, you thought we were idiots. That’s not fun. No pastor in sight. There were certainly times I begged, in tears, to be released from the task, but it was never an option. I prayed for that option, but (thankfully) it was never granted. Trying to bale would have been like waking in the midst of surgery and saying, “I’m done” and bolting.

We never had any idea what this thing might look like in reality, so we did all we knew to do. We met together to pray, to study Scripture, to dream, to pray, to worship together, etc… We read books, listened to podcasts, read blogs, took road trips. All the while, God was doing more in each of us individually than we were ever accomplishing together. That time was a period of refining our faith – believing Him when what He was saying seemed illogical and impossible (anybody relating out there?).

So, once again God does what He says He will do. In March of this year (two days before we were to attend a church conference at NewSpring in Anderson) we learned that NewSpring is launching a Florence campus later this year. We had taken road trips to NS; we read Perry’s blog and listened to his podcasts, and we could have never, ever in a gazillion decades imagined this ending. Ephesians 3:20 in full effect, baby!

And so it was that I found myself on a charter bus two Sundays ago, Upstate bound…

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3
August

Now for the Rest of the Story – Part I

After reading this, this, and this, a friend commented that I wasn’t finished. She had been anticipating Part IV. I’m really not trying to make my life into this dramatic mini-series, but I realized that she was right. We were having this conversation on a charter bus headed toward the NewSpring Anderson campus, and my narrative did fail to relay how it was that I found myself occupying that seat.

My tale kinda concluded with me discovering my passion in the midst of a nurturing and supportive church family. Well, September 10, 2006, rolled around – Black Sunday as I call it. As churches sometimes do, our church exploded and our church family was destroyed. Our church family had become as vital to our lives as our biological families – perhaps even to a fault (finding security and purpose in the church and not truly in Him). To some of you this may sound melodramatic, but it was devastating. There were many, many people there who had loved on our girls literally from the days they were born. They had rocked them and changed them and fed them and sang to them and taught them Bible stories, and we had shared hundreds of meals and shed gallons of tears together through the years. Approximately two hundred people displaced in a day. An entire staff of families without jobs. A mass of brokenhearted people wandering. Some are still wandering. Some are still hurting. Some are still angry. Some still carry their tears very close to the surface, and they spill over easily. And this is two years later…

I remember getting into bed after church that afternoon and sobbing over the loss of relationships. No matter what happened or how this thing worked out, it would never be the same. And I was right; it never will be. A very real time of mourning began. Foolishly we attended another church the following Sunday, and I wept through the entire service – not quietly. The kind of crying where you can barely breathe and you kinda shake like you’re having a seizure. Chris sat there stewing and steaming; he was so angry I thought he was going to deck the offering guy. I can honestly say the churches in this area are phenomenal; they rushed to wrap their arms around us, but that was the last thing we wanted. We didn’t want to be loved by their church; we just wanted our own church back.

And to this day, it is an absolute treat to run into someone from that time. To those of you who are reading, you must know that I love you as much today as I ever did and I miss you!!!

So we began the daunting prospect of visiting churches. We learned that Florence is blessed with some fantastic churches who are pastored by awesome men of God and comprised of godly men and women. We prayed each Sunday, with each new church, that we would find a home. We were desperate for something to feel right; we were desperate to feel like God was showing us something – desperate for a spark of hope. Nothing! Nothing Sunday after Sunday… Why was He being silent? Why couldn’t He just give us something to grab on to?

He was up to something new, and He just needed us to simmer in our desperation for Him for a while…

To be continued (where I’ll really wrap it up this time)…

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3
August

And this I know…

Beth Moore brings it – without fail!

I attended the simulcast of her live conference in Louisville this weekend, and here are some of the most salient points…

  • Let us be about pursuing the narrow way without getting a narrow mind.
  • He put me in this generation in my sphere of influence with a purpose.
  • Faith and freedom are inseparable.
  • God doesn’t exaggerate; He just tells the Truth.
  • His breath gives life.
  • He can thoroughly equip me for whatever He has for me, but not outside of reading His Word! Now!
  • When the season of testing exceeds the season of believing, we are headed for a season of falling.
  • My roots of faith are only as deep as I am convinced that God loves me.
  • He will birth your passion from your pain!
  • The curative over anxiety is prayer (I had to share that one just because I love that word).
  • We are left here to be a benefit.
  • When God pours His Spirit on me, my “dirt” becomes soil (Luke 8).
  • Be what you seem.
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