Sacred Mundane: The Blog

I am hands down the least qualified person on the planet to write about physical suffering.  I have 20/20 vision, perfect hearing, and a healthy, fit body.  I have unusually low blood pressure, have never broken a bone, and even had a very smooth, uneventful labor and delivery of our son.  I’m thankful for the health that I enjoy.

On Sunday Pastor Dale was talking about heaven and our new bodies.  He was explaining that for those of us who are relatively healthy, the idea of a new body, a heavenly perfect body, isn’t all that amazing. But the little paraplegic girl, the blind man, the deaf toddler, the aging elderly who are racked with aches and pains, for these the hope of a new body is real.  For some reason this stuck with me this week…

The only little glimpse I get of true physical suffering (it is a tiny glimpse), is what I experience during the first trimester of pregnancy–nausea, vomiting, and migraines.  I’m plagued with migraines on and off normally, but they are more frequent and more intense during early pregnancy.  Of course this is exacerbated by the nausea, and vomiting makes the headaches worse, etc. etc.  This is such a short period of time, but I’m realizing that these past few weeks, I’ve avoided my blog as much as possible, because I have nothing to say. I have no insights, I have nothing clever, interesting, and thought-provoking to contribute. I feel like all I can think about is my headache and not throwing up.  I know, I’m a wimp, but this little teeny dose of physical suffering has made me realize that I have no inkling how much physical suffering taxes and drains those who suffer. It’s not just an annoying pain–it’s energy sucking.  I feel frustrated because my brother and sister-in-law are here, and usually I would be Sally Hostess, and make all the meals (and love doing it!) and be bustling about doing things.  Now all I want to do is hide in my room and eat pizza and even glancing at dirty dishes makes me sick.  It’s so frustrating to be at my worst, especially when I so long to be at my best, to serve, help, be energetic, fun, and happy. 

So this has made me sit and realize that so many people, because of physical suffering, never get to feel at their best.  They have the desire to be energetic, hospitable, happy, joyful, helpful.  But because of their suffering they are restricted, held back, handicapped if you will.  I recently took a meal to a woman battling breast cancer.  She lives in huge beautiful home. How hard it must be to be too weak to clean your beautiful home. To be the one receiving all the meals when you’re the one used to fixing them for others.  How hard it must be to live in this state permanently.  To battle an illness, perhaps knowing that you can never be your best self again. I’m beginning to understand how important that grieving process would be.

Perhaps you think this is a bit heavy for me to be contemplating when it is only morning sickness that I’m dealing with. I know, you are right. My little teeny tiny suffering is small and short-lived.  But I guess it’s given me a little more understanding for the physical suffering that is so much more than physical.  The emotional, psychological struggles that eclipse our perspective, our insights, our inspirations. 

I’m such a newbe in this arena, I’m just asking God to help me to better understand those who truly suffer physically.  I pray that no matter how we suffer, it would not eclipse our perspective of who God is.  And for those alongside those who suffer, may we not offer pat answers, but truly love, truly care, and truly come alongside as a source of strength and hope.  And, while I’m praying, may my nausea and migraines end soon! Let it be. Amen.

I decided to take my own advice and I “unplugged” for 3 days (well, this is the end of the third day).  I wrote Friday’s LiveDifferent Challenge on Thursday and post-dated it, then shut the laptop and traveled to Camp Riversong…in our backyard.  We had the awesome privilege of having Aaron and Candi (the famous San Jose friends) come to visit us for the weekend, wanting to camp in our backyard.  Yeah, in the backyard.  When you live in a place like Riversong, with the river rushing just feet from your backdoor, and a swimming pool and croquet and a hot tub and badminton, people do crazy things like come camp in your backyard.  So, we found a tent at Fred Meyer for $20 and decided to camp with them.  Dutch slept inside in his crib, which worked fabulously since sharing a tent with a wild animal is not a recipe for sound sleep, and Jeff toted out the futon pad and our memory foam into the tent, so between that and our down comforter, we were comfy to say the least.  Camping was the perfect opportunity to be Unplugged because I didn’t even think about my computer all weekend.  We only checked the time to gage naps and feedings (they brought their 7-month-old daughter), and bedtime was determined by when it was too dark and cold to keep playing the Settlers of Catan in the yard by the campfire (yes, there’s a firepit too) eatint S’mores.  Wake up time was determined not by an alarm but by the rising sun or, as the case was this morning, the rain seeping into the tent and soaking my pillow (not everything about camping is fun).  We BBQd our meals, drank soda from the cooler, and ate Pringles, and spit BBQ sunflower seeds.  It was fabulous.

The only downside was the nagging nausea that is still accompanying the precious little grape-sized baby in my tummy.  It is terrifying how much food I can consume just in order to keep from being sick, and it’s a little scary that I’m only 8 weeks along and already showing.  But, what do you do?  It’s 8:30, and I just finished a mammoth bowl of Cheerios…maybe I’ll go get another one.

This weekend made me think about friends, and what makes great friends.  We not only were able to spend time with Aaron and Candi, but my brother and his wife, my precious Megan, Melea, and many other friends and family who came to celebrate the 4th of July.  So, tonight, I’m home from Camp Riversong (back inside in my own bed, although the down comforter is still really damp and my pillow’s still wet), and I’m reflecting on friends.  What makes, in my opinion, a great friend?

1. They let you be your true self, but they challenge you to be your best self.

2. You can eat junk food together.

3. You don’t compete with each other.

4. They truly want the very greatest blessings for you.

5. They rejoice when you rejoice and weep when you weep.

6. They don’t require any entertainment–they’re happy to just be.

7. They don’t get mad when you beat them at badminton.

8. They love and respect my parents and my family.

9. They’re real and honest.

10. They make me love God more. 

That’s a friend. And I’m so thankful to have friends like that.  Thanks Aaron & Candi, for coming and camping at Camp Riversong. Thanks, Megs, for taking your only day off studying to chill in Molalla and play Catan.  What a great Unplugged weekend. 

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PS For those of you who have read The Love Nest (top right under Featured Stories), be sure to read the comment from Lynn (on the left under comments).  It appears we weren’t the only ones who were a little grossed out by this supposed nest of love! 🙂

It seems a bit odd for me to be writing about margin in time during a season of relative timelessness–holiday.  The 4th of July, and I’m venturing to guess that no one is reading this blog today :-), because you are either sleeping in, camping in the great outdoors, sitting watching the Independence Day fireworks, or consuming hamburgers, baked beans, and potato salad.  I am, in fact, doing all of those things as well.  But all that to say that it seems an odd time to be discussing our overloaded lives.  But I can remember a time, in years past, where I only wish someone had hit me on the head with this book and told me to quit killing myself. 

As we’re obviously still talking about margin, it seems natural that margin in time would be scheduling your life in such a way that you have more “free time”, right?  But first, I think we have to challenge our attitudes about busyness.  Up until almost two years ago, I remember that whenever someone asked the obligatory greeting, “How are you?”  I would inevitably respond, “Busy but good.”  Always. I remember once stopping and thinking, “Why do I always say that I’m busy?”  Because I was.  I think that is the response of a lot of people. Busy but good.  And at the time, I think that I derived a sort of pride out of being busy.  After all, I was juggling full-time work with full-time seminary, commuting 1 1/2 hours each way, staying overnight at my brother’s house one night a week to make it all work.  Before that we were both in full-time ministry in Corvallis, burning that candle at both ends and in the middle, literally melting down.  In some ways, I thrived on that. I didn’t have kids, I love being organized, and the challenge of it all was exciting.  And I realize now that I gained a lot of value and identity in being busy.  Why do we, as Americans, place inherent value on being busy?

For example, Henry David Thoreau said, “Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise to noon, rapt in revery.”  Because he is famous, and a genious, we think “Wow, that is beautiful. What a great thing.”  But what if our neighbors did that?  Or your spouse?  We’d criticize them as slothful.  Swenson says “our modern view of time is to compress it and milk it for every nanosecond of productivity we can get.”  I believe that is spot on. 

You’d think with all of our time-saving mechanisms that we’d have all sorts of margin.  In the early 1930s John Maynard Keynes observed, “When we reach the point when the world produces all teh goods that it needs in two days, as it inevitably will…we must turn our attention to the great problem of what to do with our leisure.”  Sorry, John, you missed the boat on that one.  In fact, Swenson observes that “the amount of genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse proportion to the amount of labor-saving machinery it employs.”  Ha!  Can you believe it?  We have bread machines and dishwashers and automatic sprinkler systems, and yet we have less time than those in Third World countries who spend evenings sittingon their front porches bouncing babies on their knees. 

In this category of margin would be the introduction of Sabbath rest.  The Sabbath is not an New Testament requirement, but I believe it is wisdom for man to spent 1/7 of his week in rest, true rest.  This doesn’t mean we set rules about not lifting certain weights and it doesn’t mean it has to be on a certain day (pastors can’t rest on Sundays!).  But it does mean that we choose to LiveDifferent. We choose to ignore the gnawing culture need to constantly get ahead, and we choose instead to take ourselves out of the ballgame, just long enough to breathe, refresh, turn our eyes to God, and listen to His still small voice.  I am NOT promoting greater time management here. I’m not saying let’s be more efficient so that we can get more done. I’m saying, to heck with it–let’s get less done and worship God more and recognize that our value is not based on what we do.  Yes, let’s labor for the gospel, let’s spend ourselves for Christ, but as one smart farmer said, “I cannot get done in seven days what I can get done in six.”  When we are truly aiming to work for God, His math works it all out.  Here are some ideas, for building better margin into our lives in the area of time.

1. Turn off the TV.  (I know, i’m always bashing TV). Turn off all electronic mediums, just for one day (I’m a coward here, I feel like I can’t live without my laptop.)  My sister-in-law wrote a neat blog about mental detox week…consider something like this. YOu’ll be surprised how much time you have.

2. Practice Simplicity and Contentment:  “With fewer possessions, we do not have as many things to take care of. With a simpler wardrobe, our choice of what to wear each morning becomes less time-consuming.  With a smaller estate, there will be less debt bondage to our work schedule.  Everything we own owns us.  We must maintain it, paint it, play with it, build space in our house to put it, and then work to pay it off. Perhaps if we had fewer things we might have more time…”

3. Be Unavailable.  We are now capable of being reached at all times.  I don’t care what the Blackberry ads tell you, they do not free you up to spend time with your family.  Being in bondange to your cell phone, home phone, email, Blackberry, whatever, can be incredibly draining. We must have margin and boundaries.  Create some.

4. Think Long-Term.  Consider the Tyrrany of the Urgent. It drains us of energy, time, and resources.  Think long term and plan your life thoughtfully, according to long term plans. Yes, chaos happens. Tonight Dutch pooped up his back and then rubbed his back against the couch. 🙂  Stuff happens, and we adjust. But think long-term rather than simply reacting to each moment. This helps us better control our time.

5. Get Less Done but do the Right Things.  “All activities need to be assessed as to their spiritual authenticity…we must have God-centered criteria with which to judge all activities.”  I always remind myself, God will allot me time for all the activities which He has ordained for me to do.  Consider and perhaps cut back.

6. Be Available.  Pastor Bruce Larson says, “It is possible that the most important things God has for me on any given day is not even on my agenda.”  Have I created enough of a margin, white space, in my life, that when Divine interruptions come I am able to embrace them as God’s scheduled work for me? 

7. Kari’s extra:  I think that the best gift you can give your kids is time. I know many couples schedule their lives FULL of activities for the kids–classes, swim lessons, parties, trips, vacations, but what the kids really want is for parents to sit down, get out the Legos and just play. Or read. Or talk. Or have a tea-party. Kids just want our time, unhurried, with no agenda.  I really believe that kids in America are absolutely starving for unstructured time with their parents.  And yet it’s so hard, as parents, to lay aside the busyness and the “to dos” and sit with our kids in the grass and watch bugs.  Lord help me do more of that.

So this week let’s LiveDifferent by creating margin in our time.  Waste some time with God this week.  Stand in line and refuse to look at your watch. Let other people go ahead of you in traffic. Schedule a free hour and do nothing.  Sit with your kids and read stories.  Ask God to give you a peaceful, unhurried pace in your service for Him.  And have a fabulous holiday weekend.  Enjoy your time.

Tonight I sat around a campfire, on the beach, with the crashing Pacific Ocean waves just yards away.  No annoying wind, just a crackling fire nestled down into the sand, with sitting logs on three sides.  My brother, Kris, and Jeff built the fire, scurrying around like boys, eyes dancing, collecting sticks and engineering the perfect fire.  Once the fire really took off, we tore open the bag of marshmallows, procured the necessary sticks–not too short and not too thick–and began roasting.  I sipped my hot chocolate and pulled my blanket tight around my shoulders, although by now my shins were getting hot so I laid down next to the fire, in the sand, gazing up into the darkness, savoring the sweet moment of forgetting the job search, the morning sickness (almost forgetting it until I tried to eat a marshmallow and remembered that nothing tastes right), the need to find a place to live, the upcoming arrival of baby #2 complete with financial needs.  For a little while I was back in college, eating marshmallows with my brother.  I was again a newlywed, walking hand in hand with Jeff through the sand. 

We’ve been here, at the beach, for the past 4 days. We leave Wednesday, and I am just reminded again how sweet it is to get away.  And this is my idea of a vacation.  A beach house (paid for by my parents…this is key), a stone’s throw from the crashing waves, and walking distance from the Alsea Bay, where we can use the paddle boat and Dutch can play in the shallow water.  Walking distance from a little mart where we can get milk and cheerios if need be.  Walking distance from the point where hundreds of seals gather, where we can take Dutch and watch with delight as he “Whoa!”s and points in awe.  This is the place where we can cook our own food, eat like Kings (healthy ones), and savor delicious dessert every night. This is where I can curl up in the huge wicker chair with the cream cushions and put my feet on the windowsill and look out over the ocean, lost in thought, or read for four hours straight, like I did today.  This is where I can turn on the dryer to muffle out the noise while Dutch sleeps. 🙂  This is where the huge family dining table can seat all of us, my brother and his wife and daughter and my parents and us and Dutch.  This is where we can all curl up and watch a movie together.  This is where Jeff and Dutch can bike, where Kris and Nikki and Jennika can take off in the afternoon for a hike. WHere Kris can surf (he really did!) and the boys can fly their kites and Mom can have pneumonia but still somehow enjoy the whole trip from the solitude of her room, listening to the joy and watching from the huge bay windows in her room.  This is where we have that beautiful balance of together and alone time…the mix of freedom and belonging, which is one of the strengths of this family that I will always appreciate. 

ANd this, mixed with the forced change of pace that pregnancy brings, has been good.  With pregnancy, I have permission to nap (today I got up at 6:30, walked on the beach with Jeff and Dutch, then came back, ate a bowl of Cheerios the size of a mixing bowl, then went to bed and slept from 8:30-10:30.  How awesome is that?)  With pregnancy I have permission to break all the rules of eating at appropriate times. After my Cheerios, and a big lunch, I went back at 2pm for another 1/2 a chicken salad sandwich, then at 3pm I polished off the strawberry shortcake, then at dinner I didn’t touch anything except the chicken, but filled up on Tillamook Mudslide ice cream afterwards.  I actually really enjoy the freedom…you can always just play the “I’m pregnant” card and pretty much anything goes. 

The other thing I love about pregnancy is that it allows you to be weak and to accept help.  My sister-in-law has been an absolute dream on this trip.  The very day we got here my mom came down with pneumonia, and after a trip to the hospital, has spent the entire vacation in bed.  I was in charge of planning all the meals and bringing the food, which I did, but that was before morning sickness, so now that we’re here I want absolutely nothing to do with preparing raw chicken and sauteeing onions.  She has swept in and joyfully prepared meals that I planned (that’s never as fun as preparing your own planned meals), and doing dishes, cleaning. SHe’s been a dream. ANd it’s been so freeing to just say, “Here is the recipe. Can you help me? I can’t do it tonight.”  It’s been good to say, I”m sorry, I’m a disaster right now and I’m so tired I can’t think.  Please forgive me for being a bear.  As always, she understands.  After all, she was pregnant once too.

So, this long and rambling post is basically telling you that it’s so good when life is interrupted and we’re knocked on our back a little, knocked into a soft chair with a good book and a view of the ocean. I admit, I still fall into panic mode: “We need a JOB and a place to LIVE and we have a BABY on the way!” But most of the time God is gracious enough to allow me to remember that today is today, and it is all I have.  He holds my tomorrow.  So, tonight I sit here, in a dark room, listening to my toddler son breathe noisily through his stuffy nose, and my husband breathe quietly next to me, his chest rising and falling in soft rhythm.  Across the wall sleep my brother, his wife, their daughter. Across the hall sleep my mom and dad.  Outside the waves are still crashing.  Tragedy is happening somewhere.  Rejoicing and celebrating are happening somewhere. ANd the waves are still crashing.  And God is still God, and allowing me this sweet vacation, this rest for my soul and body.  Thanks, God.  Thanks.