book recommendation

If you are a mom...

Please read this.

what would Jesus say?

I love Shane Claiborne. The Simple Way reminds me of the first church, the church in the Book of Acts, the church that I feel we are long separated from in this day and age.

I subscribed to his Facebook page a few months ago, after my husband had the privilege of hearing him speak at a youth conference this summer. Just yesterday, Shane posted an article he had written for the Huffington Post entitled What Would Jesus Say to the NRA?

What would he say? Shane captures it so well, I won't attempt to re-write the article from my own perspective; I'll let you read it and draw your own conclusions.

What I want to write here is this: What do the words of Jesus mean to us today?  When we use his words to justify an action or belief, are we sure we are reflecting the true, authentic, servant leader of Jesus?

I feel like the authentic compassion and love of Jesus is often missing when we sling words at one another, deny basic rights (rights afforded to us by our constitution) to one another, insist our way is the only way, or live a life in which we only look to build up ourselves, our wealth, and our possessions.

I am not writing this as one who has it all figured out, as one who is as compassionate and humble as Jesus. Absolutely not. I am writing this as a reminder to myself and hopefully as a call to action for anyone reading this. Are our words as authentic, compassionate, and grace-filled as those of Christ?  When we use our words, are we loving others as Jesus loved us? Are we bearing crosses or swords when we respond to our brothers and sisters?

My words feel inadequate here. My heart knows more than my head can express.

I will bow out of this post with humility and say, I don't have all the answers; I am no biblical scholar; I simply want to live a life of compassion, humility, and love.

And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

a new title? nah.

I feel so removed from my blog's title anymore as running does not have the place in my world right now as it did when I began writing. I hate to start a new blog, though, and I do intend to make running a part of my life again...so I'll keep the title for now. Let's just think of "on the run" as describing the fact that my life really never stops any more :)

With that, I'll begin a new post. I have been itching to write again for a long time- with so many things on my mind and heart (from Chik-fil-a, to the recent election, to women's health issues, to being a full time mother in a full time outside of home work world, to the recent school shootings...).  I am hoping to revive this space again for a place for thoughtful writing to help me process those things I often feel in my heart but need help expressing.

My most recent post has me smiling to myself.  8.5 months in to raising our happy little boy, and I couldn't be more elated that he is who he is- a smiling, squealing, into everything he shouldn't be little boy.

I saw a post on FB that sparked my desire to write today. A post about our "Pinterest" world in which it seems we are all in competition to be the craftiest, most homemade organic mommas out there. And the moment we can't compete, we feel like absolute failures. Well- my response to that post is first: Kudos!  My second response comes not from my own words but that of another momma, a favorite of mine: Pregnant Chicken. Every mother must read this- Why you are never failing as a mother.

Read it.

Memorize it.

Find comfort in it.

Love your child(ren) with every fiber of your being and let that love fill them beyond the brim. That's all they need. The rest will fall into place.

snips and snails

**Author's note: This post was written way back in May 2012, just weeks after our precious boy entered the world. Apparently I was waiting on something else to "hit" me about this topic before posting as I find it here in draft form. Let's just go with the draft, shall we?  Please note, our rumbly, tumbly little boy is a whopping 8.5 months old now!


I have no idea what a snip is. I am not sure that is crucial when raising a boy, but it seems to be what they are made of.  This is one of many things about boys I do not know but will soon be learning as I continue on the adventure of raising our own Mr. C.

I feel so blessed to be the momma of a snuggly, rolly polly, smelly, wiggly little boy.  We had no idea if C was a boy or girl before he arrived the morning of April 4th. Our entire pregnancy I imagined he was a boy. I just "knew" somehow in my inmost being that my doctor would proudly say "it's a boy!" when our baby entered this world.  I was not surprised one bit.

Surprised? No.

Nervous? Yes.

I was happy and elated that our sweet baby was here with a healthy cry and an even healthier head of hair! But I was nervous. Nervous about having a baby boy. Nervous about raising a baby boy. Nervous because I feel I know n-o-t-h-i-n-g about raising little boys! (And then I realized I know nothing about raising girls, either, and I felt some relief :)).

As we brought C home from the hospital and began our lives as a 3 person family, my mind kept moving to the future. Sure, I can do this baby stuff. But what about later? What about the toddler years when he is a rambunctious little tumbleweed of a boy and I am exhausted just trying to keep up with him? What about those teenage years when he has to deal with boy teenage things and I have no idea how to help him with those boy teenage things? (And then I realized that C has a wonderful father who can help him..and even shed some light for me on these things).

As I was on a walk with our little "buddy" as we so often call him, his plush soccer ball, attached to his stroller, caught my eye. Suddenly my heart and my mind were flooded with warm thoughts of this little dark haired boy with dirty little knees chasing after an actual soccer ball amidst a herd of his own kind, smiling and giggling as his feet make contact, beaming at us with pride when he scores his first goal.

And not long after that walk I was digging in our garden planting our vegetables for the year and my heart leapt at the sight of the wriggly worms crawling in and out of the dirt. I imagined C digging in that same dirt in summers to come, delighting in those wiggly little creatures, grabbing fistfuls of dirt and squealing as his little hands get dirtier and dirtier.

As I reflect on the life that is to come with our amazing, sweet, crazy haired little boy (seriously, his hair is worth mentioning again--it's awesome!), I get so excited. So excited to raise this little boy to be a kind, gentle man; to enjoy the world around him; to discover his passions and never fear pursuing them; to have a deep faith; to know that no matter what he is always loved.

calling

A Letter to Colin (written before he was born)

Parenting as Art 
by: Gordon Atkinson

you do your best
you do what seems right
in your gut

often maybe even mostly you dont know why you do what you do

and somehow in the delightful mix
of your sin
and your sorrow
and your joy
the two of you bringing your best and your worst to this

a unique and lovely human forms and comes into being

carrying your sins and your virtues
often magnified
and being broken and human and wonderful
like you

Dear Little One,

Daddy sent me this yesterday while I spent another day on bed rest with you. I love the words of this poem. And I have been thinking a lot lately not just about parenting as an art but about parenting as a calling. Your dad and I are broken and so very human…and together in our love for one another, we chose to bring another broken, human, and yet so wonderful being into this world. We are not perfect. You are not perfect. But you were made perfectly. And we were made perfectly. God made us perfectly. Our very humanness, though, takes the perfectly created creations that we are and renders us imperfect beings.

What I like about this poem is that it reminds me that our best and our worst are coming together to make something so wonderful. You are already so wonderful. A mixture of what makes us as your parents both wonderful and not so wonderful at the same time. The mix of sin, sorrow and joy is described as a “delightful mix.” It takes all of that to create an amazing life together. It isn’t all perfect. We make our mistakes. There are traits we wish we didn’t posses, actions we wish we had never taken, words we wish we had never spoken. All of these things are part of the delightful mix that is our life.

Parenting is a calling because it pushes us outside of our limits, our self-created boxes and walls, and asks us to give of ourselves in a way that is bigger and heavier and more grace-filled than anything else we could give our lives to. Before we got pregnant with you, I knew that being a mother was a calling for me…or at least I wanted it to be my calling. I knew it was a calling because while it delighted me in my innermost being, it also terrified me to the core. I knew it was not something I could do, or that we could do, without God’s help and blessing. The only way two imperfect people can take on the monumental task of parenting is to rely on God’s infinite wisdom.

Our commitment to you, little one, is to continue to follow this calling as we would with any other. This is not a task we take lightly. We cannot promise we will be perfect in this endeavor. But we will commit to calling on God’s support and wisdom…which will itself come in so many forms through friends and family and experiences…to raise you in the best possible home with a palpable love that you will never have to question.

.feet.

i HATE feet.

As a child with abnormally large feet (thank you, family genes), I was always super self-conscious about them. I still cringe remembering going to the bowling alley with my youth group, asking for a pair of size 9 shoes, and the attendant (who I am sure was no more than 16) saying, "Wow. Big feet." Ugh.

My feet aren't a model's feet. I can never buy "cute" shoes on sale because they never have my giant size left over. My toenail polish is always chipped, and I have huge callouses from running. I don't exactly like to flaunt them. And, frankly, the thought of a foot rub makes me want to gag.

My foot phobia made Thursday night even more humbling than expected. It was Maundy Thursday, and as I walked through the prayer stations our pastor had so lovingly and creatively set up around the sanctuary, I reflected on the life of Jesus, the ways in which his love is manifested in our every day world, the last meal he shared with his disciples from which the gift of communion was born.

Maundy Thursday is always a humbling time, a time to reflect, a time to remember. Every year as a part of these stations, the one I always skip is the foot washing station. I fear judgment and ridicule. I hate the feeling of someone else's hands actually touching what I find so ugly about myself.

But this year, I couldn't turn down the invitation. Walking in that night, I was perfectly content skipping right past the station with no plans whatsoever to sit down in front of our intern pastor and offer my feet up to be washed. But as I made me way through what I thought was my final station for the evening, I saw our intern pastor sitting in front of the giant bowl of water, towels and pitchers surrounding her, head bowed as she read the Bible. This picture touched me. And I wanted to take part in the spirit of what was happening over there.

I walked over, sat down, looked her in the eye and said, "If you promise not to judge my feet, I'll let you wash them."

Teri's eyes smiled as she reached over to hug me. She grabbed a towel, I lifted my naked foot into her hand (my hear pounding the entire time), and she began to pour water over one of my biggest insecurities, and tell me wonderful things about this body part that fills me with so much anxiety.

She told me that my feet were beautiful feet, that God loves these feet and made them beautiful, and made me beautiful, and blessed every path these feet touched. She reminded me of where these feet have been (offices and schools and churches and streets and homes). She told me that these feet had been to holy places.

As I listened to her talk, feeling the warmth of the towel cradling and drying my holy feet, I realized that these feet are a gift. No, I still don't think they're very pretty. And, no, I will still never let my husband give me a foot rub at the end of the day. But these feet are holy feet. They are a gift. They equip me. They allow me to move forward--physically and spiritually.

Foot washing in Jesus' day was a dirty task. Sandels and bare feet on dusty roads meant that feet were literally in need of a wash, a bath. It wasn't just symbolic. Physical dirt was removed in this process. And Jesus (God) humbled himself, put himself below that of his disciples (physically and spiritually) on that first Maundy Thursday night to take their dirt-caked feet in his hands and wash them.

This was a humbling experience for me as a recipient of such a gift. I had to lay aside my fears of judgment in order to do this. And it reminded me that my feet are beautiful, that they are a gift, that they do walk in holy places.

Foot washing is a part of the service experience of Samaritan's Feet, a wonderful organization providing shoes to impoverished children. Shoes. How many pairs are in my closet and yet there are children who long to have just one pair--a pair that fits, a pair that will protect them as they walk to school or do their chores. When volunteers from Samaritan's Feet deliver the shoes to these children, they wash their feet. They humble themselves and caress the dirty, calloused feet of this sweet children as a gift, a reminder that they, too, have beautiful feet, worthy feet, holy feet.

So, remember your feet today. Cherish them. Be reminded that they are holy feet, no matter where they might take you.

new year, new...

I do believe this is my first blog post this year. It's my first post in at least 6 months. I almost forgot it even existed until I was reading another friend's blog (who herself had not written in awhile) and was reminded that I eagerly hopped on the Blogger bandwagon some time ago and had left it in an utter state of stagnation. It almost seemed pointless to write again...nearly embarrassing to have the audacity to post after such an unexplained absence. I mean, there's a lot of pressure for this post to be really, really good. I mean, what if no one has noticed or even cared that this blog has gone into hibernation? What if my readership of one actually gets excited to see a new post after several months only to be met with disappointment that all insight I ever had is gone?

To take the pressure off, just a little, I decided to ease back into bloggerdom with a post on my resolve to revive this blog again--and why even after a 6 month hiatus, I still think it's worth it. Here goes...

I hate New Year's resolutions. I've made them in the past and never kept them for longer than a month. They seem arbitrary to me. I get the concept--new year, new you kind of thing, I suppose. I just see the New Year's resolution as an excuse. We make them. We break them almost as quickly as we made them. September rolls around, we examine where we are in life with our health, weight, career, family, {insert whatever here} and we think, "No, it's not where I'd like it to be...that will have to be my new year's resolution this year" and continue to keep doing whatever we want to stop doing (or don't do whatever we want to start doing) until January rolls around. We attempt the resolution, realize it's too much, fall off the wagon once, and throw our hands in the air thinking, "Well, at least I tried." And thus the cycle begins again.

OK-maybe it's not like that for everyone, but for me it is. I find that if I can't get it perfectly right the first time, then I'm just done. I tried, it didn't work, so I'm going to chalk it up to failure and move on to something else.

This new year, though, I'm trying to approach these mishaps, failures and tries in a different light. Take this blog, for instance. As my husband just so appropriately reminded me, "You haven't written on your blog for like 6 months." Yes, dear, I know. But I can start again. It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

One the greatest ways I am learning this concept this year is through teaching my first college class...well, teaching my first class period. I came in raring to go. I was giddy with excitement at the end of my first day. This was going to be an amazing semester! I found my classroom without any glitches. I didn't stumble over my perfectly prepared lesson plan. My students were participating on day one. They seemed eager. They seemed to like me. I couldn't wait for class #2.

And then came class #2. The "first day" goggles were off, and suddenly I realized I was standing in front of a group of students looking to me for the answers. I was the "expert" in the classroom. I was handing out their grades. I was giving them the information that would be the foundation of some of their career paths. That was a lot of pressure!

Sometimes they had questions that I couldn't answer.

And sometimes time ran out before I could finish my carefully planned lesson.

And sometimes that carefully planned lesson just didn't go like I expected it to.

And one time an ice storm cancelled class entirely...and while my students were no doubt thrilled, I was just a little bit heartbroken.

All of my lessons have not gone as planned. Sometimes I pose questions, and my students just stare at me like I have two heads. And sometimes I fumble over a statistic or get so distracted by an unexpected question that it takes me a very visible moment to get back on track with where I want to be headed next.

This semester has not gone perfectly. But each week has challenged me in a new way. My students have challenged me. They haven't always felt their grades were fair. As a people pleaser, I have had to take this all on stride and not let it get to me.

As I look towards the last 2 weeks of the semester, instead of focusing on all that hasn't gone well, I'm focusing on what I've learned, the improvements I can make for next year, and the fact that I am actually doing something I have wanted to do for a long time.

I'm focusing on how, as a professor, I was able to ease the mind of a typically well-prepared student who told me she just found out her brother had stage 4 cancer. I'm remembering the day one student's reading response grade jumped 20 percentage points because her writing had significantly improved. I'm focusing on the day that I sat among my students (rather than standing at the front of the room) and we talked about what "home" meant to each of them...

This is a huge step for me--a step in the direction of not always worrying about being perfect or being "the best" and learning how to love the journey. Perhaps that has been my unspoken New Year's resolution...a new attitude. A new perspective. A new way of...life.