friendship is not a razor blade. friendship is a life raft.

I don't know where this notion that friendships exist to filet you open to provide an opportunity to get healing came from. I've heard this perspective so many times and I have to say it is ridiculous. When I look at the Word of God, friendship is love. It is support. It is encouragement. It is life. Saying that real friendship is "messy" is like saying real friendship is volatile. Not true. Of course, every relationship whether it is familial, romantic or purely social is going to have it's ups and downs. When different personalities and backgrounds mix, you are sure to get some sensitive patches.

But I have seen so many situations in the lives around me and in my own when a friend is untrustworthy, manipulative or controlling and after the bombs go off and everyone is recovering, it is brushed off as "God is just doing something in me" or "God is just doing something in them" or "the enemy is after me". Then you hug and re-enter the destructive cycle you just hopped out of. Sure, God can use anything. But just because God uses something sinful or tragic to teach His people about holiness does not mean that He planned the murder or orchestrated a fatal car wreck.

I think I definitely subscribed to to this line of thinking for a long time. Mostly because I have spent most of my life in very unhealthy, self-seeking friendships. Because of their un-wholeness and mine. What I am realizing, coming out of an incredible season of healing, is that it just isn't true. For the first time, I am engaged in deep relationships with other women that are lifting me up and teaching me to serve. Do I sometimes get annoyed? Absolutely. Do I sometimes get offended? Absolutely. Do I still choose to believe the best about them? ABSOLUTELY. Do I still choose to try to be selfless? ABSOLUTELY. Do I feel safe? ABSOLUTELY. Am I perfect? No. Are they? No. Then when people on the outside look in on relationships like this, the only thing they know to do is to evaluate what it says about them. Even though nothing is being said.

I hope that if you find yourself in a relationship that is
- constantly producing drama
- inflicting emotional injury
- feeding insecurity
- surviving on manipulation
- encouraging negative behavior
that you can start to believe that although it is common, it is not acceptable or spiritually enriching. The easiest way to believe this lie - please hear this - is when it is the one dead flower amidst a colorful bouquet of sweetly smelling flowers like fun, humor, adventure and common ground. The important thing to understand is that this one rotting quality will eventually infect the rest and you will be left bleeding at the end.

Can people change? YES! I DID! When it all boils down, the simple solution is deciding you want to love someone vulnerably and selflessly and that you want not just to live life together, but that you want to live a fruitful life together.


WOMEN! STOP HURTING EACH OTHER. STOP COMPETING. CHOOSE TO LOVE.

Physical, Verbal and Emotional Immodesty

So I have been out of town for a couple of weeks and got back and settled back into my life. I went to Texas, where I grew up, for my brother’s wedding which was spectacular. I had a memorable visit, but what struck me most was how much California really feels like home to me now. I missed everything here and was so ready to come back. When I got off the plane, I felt like I could exhale and then yesterday we had brunch with our friends and I was like “Yes! I am home!”. It is a great feeling.

Something interesting happened the day of my brother’s wedding. He got married on a sail boat on a lake and the day of the wedding, they got a room at the Hilton by the marina. It is a really nice hotel that is right on the water. When we arrived at the hotel, I noticed that there were a lot of teenagers dressed up in formals and realized that it must be homecoming. Now, homecoming in Texas is NOT homecoming in California. First of all, football in Texas is not football in California. Second of all, school dances are a huge deal. Apparently, this was the group’s senior homecoming and the parents all got them rooms at the Hilton to get ready and take pictures on the lake afterwards. This is not making sense to some of you, I know. But just suffice it to say that it is different in Texas. My point is that these were not just 16-18 year old girls dressed up nice for a dance. The words that came out of my mouth were, “I feel like I am at the playboy mansion.” I could not, COULD NOT believe what these girls were wearing. Not all of them were horrific, but the worst ones were these tight corset sweetheart tops with tutu skirts. Walking towards me, their breasts were desperately but futily trying to remain in the top and once they got past me, (yes, I turned around) their bottoms were doing the same. They seriously looked like hookers. And then there were the parents, parading their girls around on the arm of teenage boys who probably thought they were the luckiest guys on the planet. We were all talking about the ridiculous scene and so were the rest of the wedding guests. There is a lot to this story, but I will skip some of it.

The next day, I see these girls on the news. Not joking. Apparently, when they arrived at their dance, the chaperones would not let them enter because they were inappropriately dressed. The parents had gone to the news stations to protest the injustice and of course, it actually made the news. Journalism is another topic altogether, but I think this speaks for itself. I went to the internet story and read the comments and I could not believe the response from the community. Here is one comment:

“What a mean-spirited group of uptight fuddy-duddies. This isn’t 1950, it’s 2010! Didn’t anyone tell these administrators that Leave it to Beaver hasn’t been on primetime TV in over 45 years? What to do? Pull your students out of that school. Tell your local school board that nobody is going back in there until the entire administrative staff is replaced.”

Many of the comments echo this opinion and I have to say that it is completely heartbreaking to me. The saddest part of all was to see the girls with my own eyes and to know how excited they were about their appearance. Girls are being told from every avenue that if they are sexy, they are beautiful and therefore have worth. To see the adults in the community respond this way almost seems like cementing the reality. It isn’t about the dresses. It is about a culture of immodesty. Somehow we have gotten to this place where modesty = shame. “Don’t tell me to be modest! I am not ashamed of my body! My body is beautiful!”. How easy it is to make this argument. It is much harder to make the argument for the preservation of anything sacrosanct. I do not cover my breasts with clothing because I am ashamed of them. I cover them because they are sacred. This is MY body. I take pride in physical modesty because it is beautiful to me when I see a woman valuing her body.

The interesting thing about this is that the concept has bled into the emotional and verbal side of things as well. “Don’t tell me to be quiet! I am free! I can say what I want to!”. I’ve been there people, it doesn’t get you very far. I am always amazed at the way people listen to Joel when he speaks. People stop what they are doing to listen to him, and it is because he does not talk a lot, particularly when the topic is serious. He doesn’t stay quiet in conversation because he is afraid to offend, embarrassed or unsure of himself. He is quiet because he values his words. He wants to steward what he says because they are sacred to him. You cannot take back what comes out of your mouth. “Don’t tell me how to act! I can be angry! I am just being real!”. Stewarding your emotions is not being fake. It is understanding that when you are always emotionally vomiting on someone, your emotions lose validity in the eyes of others and also to yourself.

Restraint has been one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned. Not because it has improved my relationship with other people, but because it has made me own who I am. I know that my feelings are mine, my opinions are mine, and my body is mine. No one else is responsible for them and they are sacred to me. I choose the people who I share who I am with and they are people who are trusted and valuable to me. I can’t make it any clearer than that.

What Our Words Reveal About Our Hearts

I have been thinking a lot lately about how I encourage the people around me. It has always been a difficult thing for me to express affection verbally to people for different reasons, so it has always been easier for me to be sarcastic and coarse. I know that sarcasm is a huge part of humor in our culture, but for many, it has become the primary form of communication. What I have found for myself is that if I am sarcastic, I am protected and can keep conversations and situations on my terms. If I am vulnerable and caring, I am at huge emotional risk.

Something that is very common now is to jokingly respond negatively when someone succeeds. It is with a wink and a smile, so it is not taken as an insult. Last year Joel and I’s car broke down and we needed a new one. A family at our church decided to give their car to us because they had just gotten a new one. When I found out about it, I called a friend to share the news and her response was, “I hate you! Things like that always happen to you!” What kind of response is that? I also walked into church a while back wearing sweats with my hair pulled up into a pony tail and no make up on. When I came through the door, a friend of mine was standing there. She said, “Uh! How can you be dressed like that and still look pretty? I hate you!”. I never really think about comments like this, (because I am often the one giving them) but the other day I did this to someone and right after, I thought, “What am I doing? What am I saying? Why can’t I just encourage them?” For some of us, it is purely habit. This is how the people around us communicate and we have adapted. But for others of us, it is a self preservation instinct. Sometimes when we see others succeed in something that we want for ourselves, we are envious instead of happy for them. Or sometimes when we recognize something positive in someone’s character, we feel bad about ourselves.

I am not saying that sarcasm is wrong, but I am saying that positive and encouraging speech goes much further. If someone takes the time to look you in the eye and acknowledge something positive about you, it stops you in your tracks. It is like finding a drink if water when you are suffering from thirst. It is because we are all hungry for it. We actually need it and with the popular patterns of communication, it is very hard to find. Some of the most encouraging and vulnerable people I know are my friends Brandon and Rachel Naramore. It is true that they are both very funny people, but when the time comes to be real, they do not hide behind fake insults and jokes. They are not afraid to open their hearts and to say what they are thinking. And if someone experiences a victory, they are the first to rejoice with that person. I have been very challenged by them and am so blessed to be on the receiving end of their goodness. I will never forget some of the encouragements they have given me, but I am probably not going to remember the joke they told at dinner.

Joel and I even have to watch this with our son, Ethan. An entire afternoon will go by where we are being sarcastic and joking and one of us will realize that nothing real or positive has been said. I want Ethan to grow up being comfortable with saying what is in his heart, even if it makes him vulnerable.

For whatever time I have on earth with the people around me, I want to be a source of life. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard the saying “What comes up in the bucket is down in the well” but if the only thing that comes out of my mouth is negativity (even if it is joking) then it is safe to say I’ve got a good supply of cynicism and envy. If I wasn’t hiding something or protecting myself, I wouldn’t feel the need to talk that way all of the time. However, if the majority of what I say is positive and optimistic, my words will mean more to people. This is something I have been actively trying to do for the past few months and I will tell you it has largely improved my quality of life. Of course I still joke around but I try to seize opportunities to speak life as they come instead of adapting my humor to it.

In the past, what my words have revealed about me is that relationships scare me and that I had a hard time being happy for those who had what I wanted. I hope that now what my words reveal about me is that I want to love people vulnerably and that I want to give life where I can.

A Piano of Possibilities

For some time now, I have been wanting to learn how to play the piano. But for some reason, I think when you hit about 21, you start to think that you can’t learn to do new things, that you can only build on what you already know. I would think, “I wish I’d learned to play the piano.” like my time was up or something. If you have read the “About Me” page of this blog, then you know that I am in this little sliver of time in my life where I am feeling a bit invincible. I have just had this sudden realization that if I want to do something, I just have to do it. I was sitting on my porch a couple of weeks ago, listening to “Clair de Lune” by Debussy and thinking about how I never learned to play the piano, and then realized I could if I wanted to. I texted my friend Wyley who gives lessons and said I’d be ready to start the following week. Then I got online and found a piano and BAM, I had one. And not just any piano, I have a thing for antiques and this one happens to be 120 years old!

I went to my first lesson last night and I left thinking, “I will be a piano playing machine!” Hahaha. The point is that it is never to late to learn to do anything. I took some plum jam that I made to my 50 something year old neighbor, Leslie the other night and she said, “I never learned to make jam.” with a sad look on her face like she had missed her chance. I said, “I’ll teach you! It is never to late to learn.” Another friend told me she always wanted to be a Psychologist, but now she has a child and missed the boat. She can’t go to school full time. But she can take one class this semester. It may take longer to get her degree than it would a single 19 year old, but she can still do it at the pace her circumstances allow.

There are definitely things that you need some talent for, but most things can be learned to some degree. I have a long list of things I want to learn or improve upon, like knitting, baking artisan bread or playing the cello. I have a lot of time to do it. I think another beautiful part of it is that we all have something to teach each other. We can all give to one another and help each other become the people that we want to be. My book discussion group is going to turn into a “teach & learn” group for the fall. We are going to take one night a week to learn to do something we’ve been wanting to know how to do. Everyone teaches, and everyone learns. It is a really special thing to be able to contribute to someone’s life in a way that empowers them. If I take the time to teach Leslie to make jam, she will then do it on her own, knowing she is doing something she has always wanted to do and that she is capable to do even more. And I get to experience what it is to give of myself into someone else’s life. This is what my friend Wyley who is teaching me to play the piano is doing for me.

It’s just a piano, but sometimes when I look at it, I am thinking about my capability as a human being. It inspires me to open my mind to anything and everything I want to be. Life situations can alter the way we achieve things, but they cannot completely stifle us. If you want to lose 15 pounds, you don’t need a gym membership, you can run around your neighborhood. If you want to start a vegetable garden, you can learn to do it. If you want to homeschool your kids, you CAN! You just have to find a path to what you want that works with your life.

Welcome to Reality

2010 has really been a swift kick into reality. When I say kick, I don’t mean a kick in the tush, more like a kick in the face. I began the year in full frantic planning mode for my sister in law’s birthday. Another friend and I had planned to surprise her with an all-expenses paid girls getaway to Carmel. We whisked her away for a weekend of fun and pampering, stuffing ourselves with good food and ocean air. It was pretty much amazing. Our last night there, we were sitting in our room at the inn, drinking wine and eating chocolate by the fire, completely oblivious to the outside world or any of it’s problems when I got a phone call from my husband telling me that our friend, Lyndsay had just been diagnosed with cancer. I hung up the phone, shocked, unsure of how to respond. We were kind of ripped from our little paradise bubble. We drove home the next day, talking about the weekend, Lyndsay, our plans for the following week. We had no idea what was waiting for us there.

A couple of weeks later, we got another call no one saw coming. My nephew Nolan, Amy’s one and half year old son, was on his way to the hospital. After a few confusing days of tests and opinions, he was also diagnosed with cancer. I think the best way to describe this couple of weeks in our life is to say that it was like being under water. I feel like I barely remember it. It was devastating, but I kept thinking, “This doesn’t happen to us.” We were in the hospital sitting around Nolan’s hospital bed and all I could think of was sitting on the beach eating olives and grapes and cheese, watching the sunset.

Each month that followed brought a new challenge with it. One by one, the people around us were being faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In May, a few days after I had my son Josiah, we were admitted back into the hospital because his body temperature was really low. Talking to the doctor that night, somewhere between the words “spinal” and “tap” I started feeling like the room was spinning. Literally. Thank God, Josiah’s temperature regulated throughout the night and we were able to skip all of the invasive testing. But in the middle of the night, while things were still uncertain, I thought back to the previous week at our community group meeting. One person battling cancer, another stuck overseas trying to complete an adoption gone wrong, another couple facing emotional turmoil in their domestic adoption, another mourning their struggles with infertility, another battling depression and anxiety, another flying to hawaii where his mother was thought to be on her way out of this world due to a mysterious disease, and me, sitting there in the dark hospital room wondering if I am going to watch my 5 day old son get a spinal tap the next day. It was a profound moment for me that I really believe shifted some deep inside of me. The way that I saw the world was changing and I wanted to yell, “I don’t want to live in this world! I want to go back!”. Back where? To the time when we all felt young and invincible; when the world didn’t touch us. But I realized that you can’t live in that world forever. It felt like we crossing over to a new realm of life together, the realm where the world actually touches you. I was and still am seeing everything differently: people, relationships, things, etc.

Although these things have been hard to deal with on an emotional level, I really believe it has been the catalyst for major change in my life that has been a long time coming. I feel like a different person than I was, sitting around my Christmas tree on December 25th. My perspective, my lens, has changed and I don’t think it will ever go back to the way it used to be. In a way, I mourn it. But I also see that it has allowed me to connect with the suffering of the world in a way that I never have been able to. I think of Job when his wife tells him to curse God and he says, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10. It is not a negative or pessimistic view of the world, it is a deeper understanding of it.

In our unexpected relationship with cancer and other ugly realities, I feel like I am seeing life and people for the first time. I have seen Lyndsay and Amy rise up to the challenge with a supernatural and inspiring strength that blesses the purposes of God despite their inability to understand it. Later in Job chapter 4, Job is doing a “woah is me” speech (that he has kind of earned) and his friend responds with this:

“In the past you have encouraged many people; you have strengthened those who were weak. Your words have supported those who were falling; you encouraged those with shaky knees. But now when trouble strikes, you lose heart. You are terrified when it touches you.” Job 4:3-5

In the midst of extreme trial, I have had the privilege to watch the people of God believe that His purposes endure. I don’t want to be the one that looks at my friend and says, “Take courage, be strong!” yet when trouble comes to my door, not believe it in my own life. Although I am sure that behind closed doors, there are moments of despair, I am so challenged by the response by my friends to the hard things. I don’t know if I will never be happy that these things crept into our life, but I do know that we are a small part of something so much bigger. It may be easier to watch life through a rose colored glass, but it is not what is real. Cancer and the sunset on the beach exist together in this life. It is not two worlds, it is one.

Bible Reading Plan by Genre

So, a friend posted this bible reading plan on her facebook page a while ago and I needed a change so I decided to give it a try. It is by far the best one I have ever used, so I wanted to pass it along. It is really cool because it breaks up your passages by genre (gospels, laws, history, poetry, prophecy, psalms and epistles) so that every day you are reading something different, but it is still pretty fluid. For example, last friday I read Isiaiah 7-11, today I read Isiaiah 12-17, next Friday I will read Isaiah 18-22. Every day is like this and it gets you through the entire bible in one year.

Here is the link:
http://70030.netministry.com/articles_view.asp?articleid=31623&columnid=3801

I have found that this keeps things interesting and my mind open and fresh so that God can speak. It also is nice to look at the bible for what it is: literature! It gives a deeper understanding of the scriptures to view them through their genre and provides a more rounded view of the bible as a complete work.

I am really loving it and am actually looking forward to my reading each morning.

No More Manna

In Joshua chapter five, God has just taken the Israelites across the Jordan River. The people build a memorial with stones and Joshua says to the people, “In the future your children will ask. ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across... He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that Lord’s hand is powerful...”

The people of the other kingdoms had heard of these miracles and were terrified of the Israelites because God had given them their land. Once the entire population was across the river, God told Joshua to circumcise all of the men. “Joshua had to circumcise them because all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died in the wilderness. Those who left Egypt had all been circumcised, but none of those born after the Exodus had been circumcised. The Israelites had traveled in the wilderness for forty years until all the men who were old enough to fight in battle when they left Egypt had died. For they had disobeyed the Lord, and the lord vowed he would not let them enter the land he had sworn to give us - a land flowing with milk and honey.”

Once all of the men had been circumcised, the Lord said to Joshua, “‘Today I have rolled away the shame of your slavery in Egypt’... While the Israelites were camped at Gilgal on the plains of Jericho, they celebrated Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month. The very next day they began to eat unleavened bread and roasted grain harvested from the land. No manna appeared on the day that they first ate the crops from the land, and it was never seen again. So from that time on the Israelites ate from the crops of Canaan.”

Ok, so stay with me... I was really moved by this passage. God rescues the people from slavery in Egypt. He takes them across the Red Sea in a miraculous event and provides manna for them to eat so that they may survive. He tries to give them the Promised Land, but then they had to wander the wilderness for forty years because when God tried to give them the Promised Land, they did not trust him. They were afraid. As a consequence, the men that were meant to fight and conquer the land would all die in the wilderness, never able to see what God had promised to them. But God’s covenant with the people still remains. Once they were gone, God takes the people across the Jordan River just as he did with the previous generation at the Red Sea. Once they have all crossed and the men are circumcised, God declares that he has formally removed their shame. It is then that they celebrate Passover (which celebrates God’s rescue of the people from Egypt).

I think that it is so incredible how God had a specific plan for the Israelites and even the people’s refusal to participate in it could not thwart the will of God. I love that it is in the fulfillment of His promise that their shame is removed and once it is removed, the land that God gave them is what provides their sustenance; the manna is no longer needed. He recreates the “crossing” for the new generation because it is a supernatural and symbolic act that “circumcises” the people from the previous generation so that they can move into God’s promise for them.

I feel like I am crossing the Jordan, entering the Promised Land of my own life. I am in this place where I am realizing God’s intention toward me and his will for my life and that it is up to me to trust Him and cross the Jordan. Once I do, it is me, through God’s kindness, who conquers the land lives off of it. I am not visiting the Promised Land, I live here. This is my home.